Control: The 100th Hunger Games
by Sarah Kennedy
Summary: "The male and female tributes will be the most disabled children in the district."  Aviary Karradi, unable to walk since an accident four years ago, is reaped. She shouldn't have a hope, but if everybody's as weak as she is, does she have a chance?
1. The Reaping

My skin feels cold in the early morning air; tendrils curl across it like vines, like the ferns framing our front porch. It feels good just to _feel _something; I've never forgotten the months after the accident, when I woke up feeling absolutely nothing. Frozen, completely paralyzed, aware of myself but unable to open my eyes or feel the ground beneath me or the blankets above me.

On all of those mornings, I wondered if I was dead.

Of course, I _should _have died in the accident four years ago. Nobody knows how I survived. Father thinks it's his strength coming out in me. Clarrine just reckons it served me right for wanting a solitary job, shunning the company of others. I don't know what I think. All I know about it is this:

I was in the pine plantation, checking the circumferences of the trees. That's something the little kids are given to do – no axes involved, no saws, it's _supposed _to be perfectly safe. So there I was with my tape measure and my chisel, carving the trees' sizes into their own bark. I remember that I used to press a kiss to my fingers, and then to the tree where I'd cut it. _I'm only doing my job, _I'd think_, and so are you. You grow, and I measure you. I'm sure we'd both rather do something else._

I think I'd adore living anywhere instead of Seven – despite being surrounded by trees twenty-four-seven, I've managed to turn out allergic to most kinds of sap. Depending on where I am, just breathing can throw me into an uncontrollable fit.

Well, I guess that's one thing the accident cured.

I'd just finished carving my five-hundredth tree of the morning, the milestone at which I always gave myself a ten-minute break. I lay facedown in the grass, inhaling the rich smell of the blades. We don't get too much grass around District Seven. There's often too much sawdust in the air, or too many trees blocking the light, or too many paths cutting through the turf. Perhaps because of that, I loved grass with all my heart: it was so hard for it to live, clinging thinly in the soil, nutrients stolen by the all-important trees, thirsting for rain that rarely comes. It gave me hope, every day I saw it, that maybe I could hold on to life too.

Even when I couldn't lie down in the grass anymore, it gave me hope.

My eyes had just drifted closed when there was a shout above me. I scrambled to my feet, looked upwards. Somebody was hanging in the tree, clutching at a branch far too thin to support their weight for long. An axe balanced precariously a few inches away, caught in a fork. I glanced higher and saw the certain signs of cut limbs. The cutter must have dropped their axe, and was now scrambling to retrieve it. I ran a few steps backwards – curious or not, I wasn't about to stand beneath a loose axe.

The cutter – a woman, I saw, as she shifted out from the trunk into the light – swung one hand up towards the axe. My own hands flashed out, trying to warn her, she couldn't grab it. Her fingers brushed the handle; with a triumphant yell, she pulled it back towards her.

Too fast. It spun free, flying through the air, straight towards me. I panicked, like the stupid child I was, and tried to run away rather than to the sides. I still don't know why I didn't take a few steps left or right, and be completely out of its path. But I didn't think. I just ran, only making a few steps before I tripped. My face was grazed by another protruding root. I remember that graze so well.

It was the last sensation I felt with any clarity.

Because one second, maybe two, after that, the axe thudded into my back.

Kids at school used to ask me if I felt any pain, if there was any blood. My answer is the same every time: I just don't remember. I _know _the axe hit me, I've seen the scars in a mirror and the lasting damage it did is fairly conclusive proof, but I didn't feel it. I guess I blacked out. One second I'm lying on the ground, tripped by a tangled root, and the next I'm waking up in the medicine tent, Father clutching one of my hands and sobbing.

My spine was severed about two-thirds of the way down. That means that I can move my arms and lift my head, but I'll never be able to control anything lower than my waist. It's like I just don't have legs. Kids ask me what that's like, too. I ask them in return, _What's it like to have no wings? _They go all confused, _I dunno, Not meant to, Just normal I guess_. Then I smile; they've answered their own question.

It's different for everyone though. For a while I lived with a man who'd suffered a similar accident about ten years before. I guess they thought that his minders could care for me too. He swore that he could tell the weather with his legs; that they tingled when it was going to rain, and when they ached it was going to snow. He was right, too – I don't know how, but his legs predicted every rain- and snowstorm that year, hours in advance.

I'm just grateful to feel anything at all. The axe could easily have landed further up my body – or killed me. So I'm rejoicing in the cool air across my skin, happy to simply know that it's cool without having to ask somebody.

Father comes in to wake me up, as if I didn't pull myself out of my own nightmares before dawn every morning. He doesn't know that though, there's no way I'd trust him with something like that.

"Hey, Avie, how're ya t'day?" His smile, painfully forced as usual, breaks through my haze.

"Not great," I shrug. It's not actually true, I feel better than most days, but I don't feel like getting into a conversation. I don't do this often, I'd start looking like too much of a burden, but it gets him to leave me alone when I need it most.

"Aww, too bad. Today bein' the reapin' and all!"

_Damn _him and his _stupid _love of the Games. I just know he's going to force me into one of Mom's outfits so I look my skeletal, crippled 'best' – in other words, still irredeemably hideous. And then I'll be dragged (that's literally) to the reaping, shoved into my age area and left. Sometimes they remember to put out a chair for me. Sometimes they don't, and Father just flops me out onto the ground. Thankfully, the other girls in my age group aren't so neglectful, and they always help hold me up.

"Y'know the Games are real important to me. And this is a real special one, too, the fourth Quarter Quell! Y're lucky to be a part of it, y'know, even if y'don' get picked."

I… what? Even if I _don't_? I've been lucky for four years. My luck will have run _out _if I get picked. But he won't get it, of course. People tell me that he was never quite right in the head before he won the Games, and that of course blew everything out of control. Now he thinks the Games are great and wonderful and such an _honor _and every year he's wanted me to take part. Now that Clarrine's in the reaping, I don't know if Father's pressuring her instead. Every year he's whispered at me to _volunteer, volunteer, volunteer_, and every year I've pretended I'm unable to lift my arms. Hopefully he'll leave me alone this year, and transfer all his focus on to Clarrine. For an instant, that thought feels wonderful, until I realize that it means I must want my sister to be made to feel uncomfortable and ashamed – or, if she goes along with him, to fight in the Games. That feels bad enough, but then I feel worse that I don't feel worse about it.

Awkwardly, Father picks me up and I'm slung in his arms like a baby. I guess he's thankful that's he's tall and solid, and I'm short and stick-thin. Personally I don't mind being short. What's height when you're lying down? He thumps down the corridor towards the kitchen, either not noticing or not caring about the way my arms flop out and smack the walls. I grit my teeth and say nothing about the aching pain leaking through my skin. Unceremoniously he dumps me in my chair – high-backed, with a narrow seat enclosed on two sides so it holds me upright – and turns to my sister.

"Mornin', Clarrie! How y'doin'?" He ruffles my sister's curls and smiles at her, the broad, genuine smile I wish he'd give me. I know I'm a pain, I know I make a huge amount of work for him, but I'd think, or I used to anyway, that he could occasionally give me a smile.

"I'm _good_, Dad," Clarrine gushes, her usual style of communication, smiling up at Father. Stupid suck-up kiss-ass… Clarrine tries so hard to get on his good side that I wonder if she's going to volunteer this year, just to win his eternal favor. And it will be eternal, for the rest of her life – three weeks, most likely, but if she won... If Clarrine, at twelve, won the Games, won the Quarter Quell… I can't imagine how happy he'd be. I picture myself getting quietly shunted aside, further and further, as the two victors get closer and closer.

"Y'first reapin' t'day!" Father beams like this is actually a good thing, like the fact that Clarrine could, theoretically, be dead in a few weeks is the best thing since bread. "We're gonna make ya _beautiful._"

We? Who is this _we_? Certainly not _me _– the two of them go off together, leaving me forgotten, stuck at the table. And certainly not Mom, she wouldn't come out of her room just for this.

Mom's sort of like Father, not right in the head, except she's far worse. For some reason she just can't tolerate being around people, just _can't_. It's like the allergic reaction I have to sap. She's managed to speak to me a couple of times, but I barely know who she is.

I close my eyes and try to drift back towards sleep. Sleep has always been something of a haven for me – a place I don't have to deal with my family, a place where feeling nothing is a good thing.

But sleep won't come.

Father and Clarrine will probably be several hours getting her ready for the reaping before they think to come for me. All I can do is sit in my chair and occupy myself somehow. Mostly I make things, little carvings and colored knotted bits of fabric. It's something I can do on my own and I love it beyond measure. When I'm making a tiny model tree from scrap shavings and sap it's easy to forget the absence of my legs, the absence of my family, and what is practically the absence of life.

But Father's forgotten to put anything out for me. This has happened before, but rarely; he leaves me in the chair all day but most of the time there's something for me to play with. Sure, sometimes it's socks that need darning or a shirt that needs patching, but that's okay. I actually enjoy contributing something real, something valued, and even sewing occupies me.

But today the table is blank and empty. I resign myself to a long wait. I do a lot of waiting. It totally sucks to be completely dependant on other people.

It's hours later, the sun's slid a couple of inches across the floor, by the time Father and Clarrine pop out of the dressing room.

"Aw, Avie, we forgot all about ya!" Father actually looks slightly downcast, but I think that's just because I'm not going to look special at the reaping. No, thankfully there's only time to shove my body into my usual clothes, a loose shirt and pants, before we have to go.

We have a sort of sled that Father drags me on whenever we have to go anywhere that's too far away for me to be carried. Basically it's a large slab, about the size of a door, with a long handle coming off one end. I lie on the slab and try not to fall off while Father drags me behind him. It's awkward and stupid, and whenever we pass people they try not to look at me. They know we're all poor, they know I'm useless, they know I'll never be able to work – yet they still think that dragging me along like a piece of garbage is going too far. Father's a Hunger Games victor, surely he can afford to pay somebody to carry me around? And he can; he just doesn't think I'm worth it.

I think what I hate the most about it is that sometimes I don't think I'm worth it either.

My heart starts hammering and I close my eyes, refusing to look out at the tiny houses and stores, like blocking out my vision will block out the reaping that's about to happen, but I can tell we've arrived when the sound of people stops getting louder, meaning we're right in it. Over the babble of voices and crying I hear Father arranging the tick-off of my name, since I obviously can't do it for myself. Then he lifts me over one of the rope barriers and deposits me into the arms of two of the girls standing inside the section. And he's gone.

Clarrine isn't, though. As Lytra and Cel, the two girls holding me up, try to get my helpless body organized, my sister ducks out of her section and runs over.

Father wasn't wrong, she is beautiful. She's dressed in what appears to be a dress made of flowers. I know it's not, because I made it myself. I know how the fabric and stitches cooperate to make that effect. But it's gorgeous and realistic, and she looks lovely in it. Some colorful blossoms are twined through her curls. She doesn't look twelve, maybe ten, barely.

"Father's been telling me what a coward you always are," she says with a sneering lip. "So I just came to tell you not to get any courage up this year. It's my turn. I'm going out there and I'm going to win, and he'll finally have to pay more attention to me." Clarrine spins in a swirl of fabric that I made for her and strides away, oozing confidence from every pore.

I'm really sick of her. She's always so pushy, and blames me for every moment that Father has to spend on me. Never mind that this morning alone he was so devoted to her that I was forgotten for hours. I hardly care that she's determined to die. Father will probably hate me for not volunteering first – especially now that I know, and by volunteering I could save her.

But I don't want to. Clarrine's not my problem. She may be my sister, but I barely know her, and this is what she wants. She explicitly told me not to volunteer this year.

"What a bitch," Cel says, looking after her. "I can't believe she called you a coward, I mean, really, after everything that's happened to you?"

"Little sisters, huh?" The words are casual but I think she knows I'm also trying to apologize being unceremoniously dumped on her and Lytra by my father. There should be a chair, but once again it's been forgotten. At least they'd rather hold me up then let me sprawl in the dirt.

Our mayor steps up on the wooden (what else?) stage and holds up a rolled scroll. Without preamble, he begins to read the Treaty of Treason.

I know that most people usually tone out during this part, but I listen. There's so little going on normally that I can't afford to ignore anything that happens, even if it is as repugnant as this. We don't know all that much about the Capitol, when it comes down to it. All we see is the orchestrated appearance on the annual Hunger Games broadcasts, and maybe the occasional announcement from President Snow. For all we know, the Capitol's a smoking ruin just like District Thirteen, and everything's faked just to make us believe they're untouchable.

But no. The tributes have to go somewhere. Somebody's running the Games.

So I pay attention to the words about disasters and death. I listen to the familiar story of rebellion and retaliation.

"And now, live from the Capitol, President Snow and the reading of the card." The mayor turns to the massive screen set up just behind the stage, which has been carefully cleared to allow full viewing. Lytra and Cel tug me up higher so I can see too.

President Snow appears, still looking neat and trim despite his age. "On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it." I'm so glad I wasn't part of that one. Picking who you want to send to almost certain death… It's almost as bad, maybe worse, than actually killing somebody. "On the fiftieth anniversary, as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, each district was required to send twice as many tributes." That actually doesn't sound as bad as the first one, to me. Sure, twice as many people died, twice as many families were ruined… but the people who didn't lose a loved one didn't lose their self-respect. Self-tolerance, even; I think I'd almost rather kill myself than _vote_, as if it were _civilized_, on who I want to die. "On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes were reaped from the existing pool of victors." Father's told us about that year – the year that District Twelve got off 'soft' because they only had one previous victor, a man called Haymitch. That year only twenty-two, not twenty-three, people died. Haymitch was one, apparently. The President opens an envelope, removes a small piece of stiff paper. "On the hundredth anniversary, as a reminder that even the slightest rebellion against the Capitol will not be tolerated, the male and female tributes will be the most disabled children in the district."

Disabled…? They're going to fill the Hunger Games with _disabled _children…

"Aviary!" shouts a voice as the screen goes black. "Aviary, that's you! Aviary, you're in!"

I'm…

I'm dead, is what I am.

I've seen the Hunger Games, I've heard stories from Father – it must be him shouting now. I know about the unbelievably physical nature of the Games. I've seen those plates that the tributes rise on, and I've known I would just have to lie there, helpless, waiting for someone to kill me.

And that's exactly what's going to happen to me…

Father's ecstatic, but every other voice I can hear is panicking with the unjustness of it. _Disabled_… I hear that word being thrown around everywhere.

It's obvious that I'm going to be the girl; with my father's shouts of support there's no way they can give it to anyone else. I'm dead.

I don't want to die. I've managed to hold on for so long. I got over my death wish six months after the accident, and since then I've only thought about killing myself once. I was doing so well, I really believed that I could survive… and now it's over.

So who's the boy? Who's a disabled boy between twelve and eighteen? I can't think of anybody off the top of my head, but then again I don't get out much.

Lytra and Cel have turned to me in horror, mouths ajar. Suddenly it's like they realize they're holding up a walking corpse, because they drop me.

I hit the ground and flinch. My eyes are flush with grass.

Grass struggles in our district. The trees take all the nutrients from the soil and we can't afford to let any go to waste. So the grass is always torn up.

But not thrown away. I remember as a child bringing home grass for Father to cook for us, because we were that desperate. Even as a victor's family, we still had to eat the grass to survive.

I feel like the grass now. I feel delicate, easy to rip up and kill. I feel unwanted, soon to be sacrificed to the hunger of the Capitol.

The mayor makes another announcement, voice shaking, but louder than before, trying to be heard over the upset rumble of the crowd.

"A contingent from the Capitol will be dispersed to determine the tributes later this week. Mental and physical disabilities will be taken into account." His head drops to his chest, the paper flutters unnoticed from his hand. "Please return home now."

I'm not sure I hear a word. My face is still down in the dirt, either everybody's too shocked to notice me or they're too horrified to touch a tribute. I'd like to say I understand how they feel, but honestly, _I'm _the dead one. _I'm _the one who's going to be hacked to bits or eaten by animals (or tributes, that's happened in the past), or burned alive or crushed or something.

"I can't believe it!" Clarrine throws herself into my field of vision and shoves me onto my back. She glares down into my face, looking ready to spit. "This was supposed to be _my _year! And suddenly it's all about you!"

Anger makes the words fly. "_I _didn't ask for this, you heard them! Hey, maybe you should convince them that you have brain damage, I bet it's even true!" I grab her ankle and jerk it sideways, tripping her and knocking her into the dirt.

"_Bitch!_" she screams, leaping up and brushing at her dress. "I hope you're happy!"

Nobody looks at us. Everybody's either disgusted with the idea of disabled kids killing each other, or relieved that they're safe. We're just sort of forgotten. Clarrine looks really annoyed but as far as I'm concerned, that's normal.

It takes a couple of minutes for Father to come and find us himself. I just try to smile and nod as he swings me up into his arms, shouting out how proud he is of me.

Yeah, because it's real difficult to lie there and wait while somebody runs up to kill you.

Despite Father's loud praises, nobody looks at me. I know from the years that I've been in the reaping, I try not to look at the tributes. Partly because it's so easy to imagine myself in their place, but mostly because they're almost certainly dead. It's easier just to forget about them now, pretend like they already don't exist. And meeting their eyes always made me feel guilty that I hadn't volunteered. I possessed the capacity to save their lives, and I did nothing.

Guess it's all coming back on me now. At least nobody will feel bad this year for not volunteering. The tributes selected don't get a choice. There's no last-minute way out.

Past Hunger Games begin to swim through my head, all the televised drama and death spinning behind my eyes. I see everything I'll have to go through before I even get to the arena – the chariot rides, the interviews, the training scores. I don't know how I'll be able to do it. I can't even stand up. I can barely lift the tools I work with. My arm aches from the effort of grabbing Clarrine just now.

I've got no hope in this at all.

Previous victors have almost always been charismatic or special, even before they got into the arena. The girl who won last year had the best sense of humor I've ever heard – her interview before the Games had me laughing so hard I hurt. The boy who won the year before was only twelve, and looked so helpless and sweet that people pitied him, and tried to keep him alive. Humor? Not when I've had no-one to practice with, no-one to learn jokes from. Helpless? Sure, but this year, _everybody's_ going to be helpless. Every kid is going to be the 'weakest' boy or girl in their district. And I'm pretty bad off, but I can't be the weakest kid in all Panem. I've got nothing. There's no reason anybody would pay money to save me.

I'm already dead.

So why go through all that terror and stress only to reach certain death? Why shouldn't I just die now and save myself all that heart-rending trouble?

There's a slight problem, though. I'd need help. I can't get myself within reach of a knife or anything else lethal. And nobody's going to help me for fear of gaining the Capitol's ire. A few years ago, a mother here in Seven killed her twelve-year-old daughter, who'd been selected as tribute. Out of mercy, she said, so that the girl could die painlessly, surrounded by people who loved her. I thought it was the best possible outcome, certainly for the girl, and the family was spared the heartbreak of watching their daughter being slaughtered, or, almost worse, slaughter someone else's child.

Of course, the Capitol didn't see it that way.

They took _all _the other children in that family – and the extended family too, _all _the girl's cousins between twelve and eighteen – and put them into the arena. That year, instead of the normal twenty-three deaths, there were thirty-two. An extra _nine _children died because of that mother's act of mercy. All the children taken to pay for the girl's death were killed, none of them won. Father thinks the Gamemakers rigged the arena to make sure none of them survived, just to make the mother hurt that much worse.

So there's no chance that anyone would help me. I can't kill myself and nobody's going to do it for me.

Until I hit the arena, that is. Then I'll have twenty-three willing murderers.

I _won't _be sick, not now, not with Father and Clarrine watching. I swallow firmly and order my empty stomach to be still. I just have to accept that I'm going to be killed in the arena, and I have to get through all the pre-Games stuff too. I just have to grit my teeth and do it.

There's no other choice. It's not like I _want _to be killed on national television, or even smile my way through the lead-up. But I have to do it. I have to go through that, and then I have to die.

Father sets me down as soon as we're back inside the house, groaning about my weight in his arms. I don't know what he's complaining about. What with me getting no exercise at all, not even walking around the house, the muscles in my legs are completely atrophied, all shrunken and wasted, my skin like paper and lying almost directly on my bones. My arms are slightly better, but not much; crafting isn't much of a workout. Additionally, we're poor to start with and Father often forgets to feed me, and I'm too shy to remind him, so I'm lucky if I get one full meal per day. Consequently, I may be sixteen but I probably weigh less than Clarrine.

As if I didn't need another thing against me in the arena. I've got no fat reserves, no muscles to convert into energy in an emergency situation with no food. Starvation usually takes about thirty days, right, with plenty of water? About three with nothing at all? I'd probably die in less than one.

_Damn _these Games! I've never been this morbid, not even after the accident. I was suicidal, but not morbid. I'm not even a confirmed tribute, not officially, and I'm already thinking about my death as a foregone conclusion.

Which of course it _is_, but I still hate the Games for making me think like this. All my cheer, my resilience, gone.

Father and Clarrine have disappeared, probably to scrub off her makeup and put away the dress and ribbons she was wearing. They've left me in my usual chair, the one with the high back and arms so I don't fall out. And now, until the 'contingent' from the Capitol arrives to determine the tributes, I basically have to go back to normal. Lying on my back. Staring at the ceiling. Asking to be carried outside. Doing nothing. Frozen.

Dying shouldn't be that hard, after all. I'm half-dead already.


	2. The Parting

My experience with the doctors from the Capitol lingers in my mind long after it's over. Their cold hands, medical scanners, their endless barrage of tests determining the extent of my disability. Electric prods trying to stimulate a response from my legs. A lengthy questionnaire to evaluate my mental abilities. They even knock me out for about fifteen minutes. I don't know what happened then. For all the information I have, they could have sat around my unconscious body sipping tea, or all raped me. I have no idea. The doctors were far more disturbing than I thought they would be, all cold hands and white masks, long coats and tools and an utter lack of empathy. I never thought I would be, but suddenly I'm glad we have no doctors in District Seven. Even if they could fix my legs, I never want to be touched by expressionless hands like that again.

At least one good thing came out of all that. Father wasn't disappointed. His daughter is a tribute.

I feel like I've been marked with some highly visible sign or something. When Father carries me outside, nobody looks at me. It's like I just don't exist – no, worse. They don't just look _past_ me; everybody actually turns away, so all I see is the backs of people's heads. Nobody wants to look at the helpless sacrifice who's supposed to represent their district.

Father reaches the Justice Building and, on the directions of one of the rather ornamental Peacekeepers, heads upstairs. I'm clinging to his neck as we lurch up the stairs. It probably feels fine to him, but I'm terrified I'll fall any second.

This room, then, is where I say my final goodbyes. From here, I'll never see my family again. I'll just disappear on a train, hurtling towards the Capitol and my death. Father sets me down on a chair and stretches, stepping aside.

For the first time, I see the boy tribute. One of us is certainly dead. We can't both come home.

For all that between us, I don't even know his name. I can't attend school and I certainly can't work, so I don't get out much. Or at all, really. But his disability is obvious.

He's missing his right arm.

And the entire right side of his body looks twisted, oddly, sort of gnarly beneath his clothes… It takes me a while to place it, and then it clicks.

Burns.

Sometime, this boy has been so badly burned he lost his arm and the scars show through his clothing. I don't know how his face escaped, but it's completely smooth. His eyes meet mine.

"I know you," he says, almost sounding surprised. "You used to go to school with me."

Now I'm ashamed that I don't remember him, and still don't, even with this prompt. I shrug. "Sorry, I don't remember."

"Yeah, you're… Aviary, that's it, right? Aviary?"

"Yeah. Sorry, what's your name?"

"I'm Kain, Kain Harwood."

I still don't remember him. I'm sure if I tried really hard I could call up a memory of a class or a fete, something non-specific, and see him there, but honestly it's not worth the effort. Even before the accident I struggled to make friends, and I'm not going through all the trouble of getting to know Kain when one – maybe both – of us will be dead before the end of the month. But he seems like a decent guy – better than I am, since he remembers me, but I can't remember him – and he's got a much better chance of survival than I do.

So I nod, and smile, and hope he gets at least some of the message. Hope he understands that I'm not going to kill him the second that I can.

"Well, Avie," Father says, moving back into my field of vision, "I guess this is it. Listen closely." He pauses and suddenly I realize how serious he is. Here, with only Kain watching – and he's had a brilliant idea and turned his back, offering at least the pretence of privacy – Father isn't going to reveal a soft spot for me, isn't going to ask forgiveness. He's still the Games victor who wants his children to follow his footsteps. Even if they can't walk. "You've got a lot against ya, I know that. But you're _clever_. They might 'ave mobility and rage, but you've got _brains_. Ya dunno what these other kids 'ave against 'em. But ya _know_ that yer mind is sound. Use what you've got."

He squeezes my hand once and walks out. I watch him go, sad and yet uncaring. I'm going to die. What difference does it matter if Father loves me or not?

Clarrine comes next, still angry and cold. I close my ears to her rants about missing her chance. She just screams at me until a Peacekeeper takes her out. Just like Father, I find I don't really care. We've never been close, even before the accident; four years was too large a gap for us to have common interests, or common school friends, and after I was paralyzed we drifted further apart.

Kain gets a few visitors, and I do my best to ignore them the way he ignored me and Father. So I close my eyes and try not to hear his mother sobbing, his four-year-old brother shrieking. Try not to hear Kain himself crying after they leave.

Then I get one more visitor.

It's Mom.

I don't know how she's done it, considering she hasn't left the house in years. There's something wrong with her that means she just _can't_ be around other people, it's like she's allergic. I don't know how she and Father got close enough to have children. I don't know anything about her, really, I can only remember speaking to her a few times. Normally she doesn't leave her room, Father brings her food a couple of times a day. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for her to come out among all these people just to see me.

"Aaay…" Her voice is soft, unused, only able to make the first syllable of my name before faltering, but it's the voice I remember. "Aaay…"

I take her hands gently, leaving her plenty of time to understand that I want to touch her, giving her the choice to pull back before the contact gets unbearable. I'm pretty sure she actually grits her teeth, but she lets me. Her skin is soft, lily-white, so delicate. Much like mine, lying over wasted, unused muscles. I know she won't be able to say anything else. She probably doesn't know how to say what she's feeling.

I lay one of her palms flat in mine, press my other index finger to it. And draw. As soon as I learned to read and write in school, I thought of communicating like this. Mom hates noise, always has, noise of any kind, and even our whispers to her would cause her to slam her hands over her ears. I tried this once and it made her so happy I vowed I'd talk to her every day. Except that after a while she couldn't bear to have me around and wouldn't open her door. But unlike Father, I know she never chose to be like this, and that's why I tell her what I've always wanted to:

_I love you_.

I draw the letters individually on her palm, leaving a short pause before starting the next one, a longer pause before a new word. I write it slowly, making sure she understands. I can't say anything aloud in case I overwhelm her, but she clutches my hands when I finish writing. Just like the rest of my family, we've never been close, but the difference with Mom is I wanted to get to know her. It would never happen, but I wanted to know her. I wanted her to know me. I wanted to find out if she was as trapped as I was, her because of the pain, me because of the isolation.

But I never will. She stands, leaves. I feel like I want to cry. I've always held on to the hope that one day she'll feel strong enough to come out of her room, even for just five minutes. But now, I know that even if that happens, I won't be there to see it. I'll be lying dead while Clarrine, who never cared about Mom anyway, gets to see her.

It's so unfair, but honestly, what about my life isn't? Crippled at twelve, an uncaring father and a bratty sister, my mother only a shadow I've seen less than half-a-dozen times, and now, dead at sixteen.

I just have to be like Mom. Grit my teeth and get through the pain. If she could go through all the agony of coming to see me, I can get through the three weeks before my death. I know I can. I have to.

Kain turns to me and shakes his head. "How are you so composed?" He's not crying anymore but his hands are shaking like leaves in a high wind. "You'll probably never see them again… and it's like you don't care!"

I sigh, frustrated. "You heard what my father said, you heard my sister shrieking. They hate me. I don't care about my family because they don't care about me."

"I'm sure they're just… tough… or something…" Kain says, but he falters, unable to explain their attitude. I shrug and sink back into my seat. I would keep talking, but for one I'm shy, and for another there's not much point in making friends when one or both of us will be dead soon.

There's a short walk between the Justice Building and the train that's going to take us to the Capitol. Two Peacekeepers carry me in a stretcher, and Kain walks with a cane. There are cameras swarming everywhere, reporters babbling. Most of them ask me what it's like to be the daughter of a victor. I'm not sure what I say. Everything's grey and hazy. We stand on the platform in the cold for about five minutes while pictures get taken, and then we're taken inside the train and rushed away from home. Forever.

Everything's so luxurious that my eyes almost start watering. Plush carpet floors, dark wood paneling, gold lamps, softly perfumed air. Even the train is straight and steady, not rocking from side to side like the lumber-filled transport ones do. The Peacekeepers take me to what I guess to be a lounge room, with wide windows and squishy chairs everywhere. My eyes boggle at the sheer numbers of the furniture in this room alone. Is this how people live in the Capitol, with more chairs in a single room than could fit in a whole house in the Districts? With carpet that you could sleep on? I reach down and run my fingers through it. It's soft, springy, like the world's best grass.

"Wow," Kain says softly, settling into a chair next to me. "Look at that."

I follow his gaze and glance out the window. Trees, thickly forested, block the horizon and even the sky.

"I had no idea the plantations went out this far," he whispers. It's true we're a long way out. I can't calculate how fast this train is going, beyond _really fast_.

"These aren't plantation trees. Look at them. Plantations are regularly spaced apart and mostly all the same size. These trees are too random to be plantation. They're wild."

We both fall silent, leaning forward to try and focus on the trees. I'm so used to seeing them in perfect rows that this chaos is almost painful, impossible to comprehend. Trees can grow on their own? If we don't get involved, they'll still grow tall and straight like these?

"Oh, my word," says an absolutely disgusted female voice behind us. Kain spins and I turn in my chair with an effort. Two of District Seven's victors stand in the doorway. Pruvan Tornay is about ninety years old and completely senile. He's got to be here just to make up the numbers. There's no doubt that he's going to stay in his cabin, probably with no idea of what he's meant to be doing, while his partner carries the entire job. Nile Lawcroft won about ten years ago, basically because there was an earthquake and she got lucky. She's got dark brown skin, darker hair and eyes, and she's so tall she almost has to duck to get through the doorway. And she would be beautiful if her face weren't twisted with an unpleasant sneer.

"So this is all I've got to work with? A paraplegic and an armless burn victim?" Slowly, she looks over Kain and me before pointing to him. "You've got a chance. You, girlie, don't. Kid, we'll start your training now. And _you_ can just look out the window." She spins on her heel and strides out before I can get my sudden anger into words. Kain glances at me apologetically before rushing after her.

"Oh, I'm sorry…" Another woman walks in, unmistakably from the Capitol; green hair, plump body, hands that have never done a day's work. "She shouldn't have said that… I'm Angel, your escort."

"Hello." I smile, nod, even though I want to tear the makeup from her face with my fingernails and see what she really looks like. But maybe Angel will help me, even if Nile thinks I'm worthless. Even if I have no mentor, having an escort to line up sponsors and train me on my public appearances can help.

"But, um… she is right, you know… only so much effort to go around… and you _know _you're sure to get taken out right away, right?"

My mouth drops open, speechless. Anger fades to be replaced with numbness. Great. Now I'm not the only one who thinks I've got no chance. I'm so out of the running that my supposed support team isn't even going to waste their time on me. The worst thing is they're probably right. What can I do, lying on the ground? I won't even be able to reach any of the weapons in the Cornucopia. I'd only get in Kain's way.

And Nile's right, Kain does have a chance to win. Despite his missing arm, he's strong and he can climb. I've never actually seen him do it, but everybody can climb in Seven. Except me, that is. If he gets hold of a weapon, if he gets lucky in a few allies and sponsors, he's definitely got a chance. I don't.

"So, um, helping you… waste of effort… Nile's on her own, needs help with Kain… help who I can, right?" And Angel's gone, just like that. No mentors, no escort. I can understand their thinking but they still pissed me off. Just kicking me out like that? _Just look out the window_. There's got to be something better I can do than this.

But it appears not. The country rushes past, rolling hills and waving grass, for hours. I enjoy looking at the grass, watching it thrive in so many different kinds. I take note of them, the dry browns, lush greens, tall, thin, pointed, any variety I can notice. It's hard, with the train's speed making everything blurry, but I drink in this view of the grass. Nobody comes to see me. I've been forgotten.

That's about normal, then, but I don't know how I'm going to be taken care of. I can barely feed myself, but somebody's going to need to carry me everywhere and do everything else that Father does. I'll have to live with it, somehow, but only for three weeks more.

I've gone to sleep in the chair before anybody notices me. Somebody shakes me awake and tugs on my arm, trying to make me stand up. Obviously some flunky, anybody important would know I can't walk. I blink the sleep from my eyes, try to see in the room's dim lighting. It's a blond girl a few years older than I am, dressed in white. She tugs on my arm again and I wave her off. She steps back, shoulders drooping, a frustrated huff escaping her lips. She bends forwards again, tries to get her arms under my body and lift me. She actually gets two steps before she collapses and we both crash into the ground.

She gets to her feet, hurries off, I assume to bring some help. I wish she'd come with friends in the first place. I hurt where I hit the ground, head aching, arms sore. At least I can only feel half of my injuries. I should have said something earlier, but sleep is still making everything a bit blurry.

The blond girl returns with two guys about her age, both tall and muscular. They lift me effortlessly and the girl leads them to a room down the corridor. They bring me in and I see a bedroom so plush I'm not sure where I want to sleep. The walls and floor alone look as comfortable as my bed back home. But the girl points towards the bed, a massive, elegant thing, and my porters carefully lay me down and tuck me in, far more gently than Father ever did. The covers are so soft, the mattress so comfortable, that I don't even notice the girl gently pulling off my clothes. I haven't felt it before, but suddenly I'm exhausted and the full impact of the day hits me.

Today I found out I am going to die. Today I said goodbye to my family. Today I left my home and everyone I've ever known. Today my mentor pushed me aside as hopeless.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll find out I don't care.


	3. The Fading

A knock on the door wakes me up slowly, drawing me through layers of sleep. The blond girl's head pops around the door and she flushes, apologetic, I assume for waking me up. I smile, stretch under the covers. The fabric against my skin is indescribably lovely. I wish I could just stay here forever.

The girl crosses the room, her feet silent on the thick carpet. She smiles at me, points down the train, mimes eating.

Mimes…? And then it hits me. This girl is an Avox. The Capitol's mute servants. The full horror of what's been done to this girl hits me. I thought I knew better than anyone what it was like to be trapped inside my own head, able to talk but with nobody listening, but surely she knows more than me. To have been able to speak, to say anything she wanted, even to sing, and never known how precious that was until she lost it. I still have all that, but without friends and an ignorant family, I rarely talk, and when I do it's like a gift. But she must have had audiences, dozens of people listening to her words. And now she'll never speak to them again.

How can the Capitol do this to people? How can they main them like this? Of course, any place that considers children slaughtering children to be the height of entertainment has got to be twisted, diseased and gnarly like an ancient tree.

I wince at the girl, shake my head. "I'm not really hungry. And I, um, I can't actually feed myself…" Both arms are always needed just to hold me upright, and the one time Father propped me up and let me try for myself, I hit myself in the face everywhere but actually in my mouth. The only good thing about the experiment was that Clarrine wet herself laughing.

The Avox girl smiles gently, mimes feeding me. She's actually volunteering to feed me? Father normally has to be dragged in to that, and he tends to forget about me halfway through and continues eating his own breakfast. Fear and shyness keep me silent. Hunger's like an old friend.

The girl leaves, closing the door behind her. I wait, staring at the ceiling, but it's only a few minutes before she returns with a tray piled with food. My eyes almost pop out of my head as I survey the feast that she's carrying almost carelessly, like it's nothing. There's stuff I can't even name, other things I've only seen once or twice. Even relatively normal things, like bread or fried eggs, are cooked completely differently to what I'm familiar with. And as she gets it all into me, forkful by forkful, I can tell it's delicious. Things I would only eat if starving at home are turned into wonders of cuisine by the Capitol. The girl smiles at me as I experience for the first time in my life the oddly comforting sensation of not being able to eat another bite, and there's still food there.

The Avox girl stands and goes to take the tray away. I want to ask her to leave it, in case I get hungry later in the day, but the words jam in my throat and she's gone by the time I get over my shyness. I'll just have to hope she'll bring me food later in the day, since I can't get it myself.

I don't even know who that woman was who dropped her axe on me, but I hope she knows what she did and feels guilty about it. I hope she knows my terror when I woke up and thought I was dead.

Although, speaking of terror, this is the first night I can remember where I've slept completely until day. Every night for years preceding this, I've had nightmares so terrible I yank myself out of them and refuse to go back to sleep, even if it's hours before dawn. But there were no nightmares last night. I was kind of expecting some really awful ones, given what my future holds, but no.

Maybe I've accepted it, then? That I'm going to die? That some child is going to have to carry the weight of my murder for the rest of their life?

The thought doesn't fill me with horror like it did yesterday. I guess my wish has come true. I really don't care.

The Avox girl returns with the two guys who carried me to bed last night, and they take me back to the lounge with the giant window. They prop me up in a chair, make sure I can't slide out, and leave again. Panem rolls past, laid out before my eyes. This is the country that survived droughts and floods, fires and civil war. This is the country that kills twenty-three of its children each year, just to prevent the reoccurrence of a stupid war that never should have happened. In all honestly, I think they've got it backwards. We in the districts would love the Capitol a whole lot better if they didn't take our children. But there must be a reason the Capitol rules through fear, that they feel it's necessary.

I shake my head. This is all too dangerous to even be thinking, even when I'm already on the Capitol's death list by virtue of the reaping. I have to stop this, now. I have to go to the Capitol, and like every tribute before me, pretend I love it. Pretend I love all the people there who can sponsor me, give me a chance at life.

The window goes black and the air takes on a rushing, echoey sound. I think we've gone into a tunnel, and I regret the loss of the view.

But only for a moment, because we shoot out into the light again and I see the Capitol.

It's gleaming, rainbow-colored like a field of flowers, buildings taller than any tree I've ever seen. The streets are wide, wide enough to fit a worthwhile plantation in. People turn and stare at our train, people as varied as all the species of trees I know. People turned sickeningly green or blue, people stretched to a height beyond what's humanly possible, people with horns and tails and wings. I feel tiny, insignificant, and unbelievably dirty beneath the sparkling, shining towers.

"That's really something, isn't it?" Kain says from behind me. "Never seen anything like that." For a moment we're both silent, staring at this unimaginable city. Despite all the television broadcasts, all of Father's stories, I'd never thought the Capitol looked like _this_…

"Look at all those… _are _they people?" Kain's laugh is awkward but hides a genuine revulsion that I share. I look at a woman with four breasts and can't help cringing.

I think they were people once, before they got cosmetic surgery, the cost of which probably could have fed the entire district for a week. And they've _all _got it. What is it like, to have so much money you don't know what to do with it all? What is it like, to look in the mirror every day and see a completely different person to the one who woke up yesterday? I bet, if somebody's spine was broken here, they'd be up and walking within a month, at the very longest. I'd have been able to run and jump and turn cartwheels and anything I wanted.

By nothing more than accident of birth, I'm in hell.

The train rushes under a building and I panic for a second – _have we crashed? _– before the door to the lounge slides open and Nile steps in.

"Well, Kain, we're here!" she says, sounding oddly like Father: trying to be cheerful but covering a deep disgust or simple boredom. "Oh, and you're here too."

She's probably forgotten my name already. Certainly I don't matter to her, hopeless as I am. I'm sure she doesn't want to waste time mentoring me, only to watch me be carved up like I'm a plank in a woodshop while I do nothing to defend myself. And the time she would have spent mentoring me is instead given to Kain, who might actually have a chance. He may have only one arm and severe burn scars, but he's strong and can climb. Good enough to be going on with.

"Yeah, Aviary and I were just watching the city before it disappeared," Kain says, sounding kind of confused. "Where are we, anyway?"

"This is the Remake Centre," Nile says, and now she's dropped the cheerful tone. It's bored all the way. "You'll meet your team of stylists who'll dress you up in shiny costumes, and then there's the chariot ride to the Training Centre. I assume I don't need to tell you what goes on there."

"We _train_?"

"Nice job, wonder boy. Well, half right. _You _train, _she'll _probably just lie on the ground moaning, right?" Nile comes over and claps a hand on my shoulder; my head rocks with the motion before I can steady it. "Try not to look too useless, Avian. Don't turn the audience off sponsoring Kain." I want to shriek, _It's Aviary! _I want to demand an equal share of her time. I want to do anything other than sit here and listen to insults coming from the woman who's supposed to help save me. But memories of Father's face stop me, the rage in his eyes from the one time I'd yelled at him, the terror I'd felt at his response… the memories keep me quiet, and my teeth click together and lock the hatred down inside me.

Fortunately she leaves shortly afterwards, Kain following her. I sit there in my chair, eyes fixed out the window, trying to dig up some interest in the utilitarian station under the building.

Eventually the door opens again. It's the blond Avox girl and her two helpers, carrying a stretcher between them. She smiles and helps the guys lift me onto the stretcher, squeezing my hand as I go.

I want to thank her, I want to say something special – she's like the friend I never had, the sister I always wanted. But I know there are penalties for getting too close to the Avox servants, so I don't, she leaves, and I'm carried off the train, into an elevator, along a corridor and then left in a room that's scarily like an upgraded version of the medicine tents back home – everything looks sterile, smells odd, the lights too harsh and no thought for comfort. After the luxury of the train, this room cuts against my senses. I push myself up on my arms and look around. I'm lying on a table in the middle of the floor, white light beaming down. It looks oddly like the dressing room back home – wardrobes, clothes hanging out, mirrors everywhere, but combined with the medical aura it's truly bizarre.

"Oh dearie, dearie me," says a voice, unfamiliar, on my left. My eyes slide sideways and I catch a glimpse of two men and a woman, maybe, since the Capitol alterations make it hard to tell. At least their skin is still, probably, the natural color they were born with, but the resemblance to what I think of as 'human' stops there. One's eyes are too big for his head, gaping wide, with impossible purple irises. The other man's hair matches, a shade of neon purple almost painful in the bright overhead lights. The fingers on his hands each have an extra joint, so there's three knuckles, not two, and they're longer than they should be, and somehow that alone is more repulsive than anything I've seen in the Capitol so far. The woman has blue paint on everything she can; her lips, her eyes, her fingernails – she looks like she's got frostbite.

"What _are _we going to do with this?" she asks, in her odd Capitol accent, all strange sounds and stressing the wrong syllables. "My word, dear, you've got no meat on you at all!" In a chorus of squeaking shoes they cross the floor and examine me. I'm reminded of the doctors who decided I was the most disabled girl in the entire district and I shudder.

"What on earth has happened to her _hair_?"

"And _who _left her in these clothes? I swear, she hasn't had a bath for days!"

"Oh, Involus, Jannit, look here…" For the first time in what seems to be a couple of hours, they fall silent. "Oh, sweetie, we knew you were paralyzed, but this…!"

"We can't leave her like this," one of the men says decisively. "These Games will be terrible if she can't even move!"

"Jannit, go talk to Hecate. She'll get an alteration order right away." One of the men, the big-eyed one, heads for the door and vanishes from my unbearably limited sightline.

"Can we get alterations? Given the nature of the Quell, I'd think we wouldn't be allowed to."

"They have to be approved by the Gamemakers, but I'm sure this will be. It's all very well to have a disabled Games, but the public still expects entertainment, and she's just going to be plain old boring."

"Gimp Games," the remaining man – Involus? – grumbles. "This is going to be the most disappointing Quell of them all."

Their callousness leaves me stunned. _Gimp _Games? _Disappointing_? How can they not be horrified at the thought of mentally and physically disabled children killing each other? How can they be sad that we won't be as exciting as normal kids, who can hunt and attack others? How can they not care that I'll be dead in a week, and all their attention is on getting some alteration done on me?

"Well, I guess we'd better get started. Don't you worry, sweetie, we're experienced. Although I _will _say you're the greatest challenge we've had yet!"

I don't actually know what they do to me. I fall asleep while the woman and Involus are getting ready. At some point I drift upwards, only to be put under deliberate sedation by one of them. I panic, dream of cold white hands probing me like the Capitol doctors back in Seven, wrench myself from the drug-induced unconsciousness.

I jerk upright and catch the arm of the seat I'm on. My eyes flash open, I catch glimpses as I flick my sight around, trying to work out where I am. Are the doctors gone? I look down, don't even notice that I'm naked under a thin sheet, only worrying about what they did to me. What alteration did those people have in mind? Has it happened yet?

"Aviary – Aviary! It's okay, don't panic!" Hands grasp my shoulders, ease me back down on the sofa. "I'm Hecate, your stylist, and I need you to relax!"

It's the feel of her hands that does it, the warm, human skin against mine. This is no doctor treating me with less respect that you would a corpse; this is a real human being who sees me as one too. I obey her, let go of the back of the sofa, drop back onto the cushions. Hecate crosses from behind me and sits where I can see her easily, on another couch just across from mine.

At least she hasn't been altered like Jannit or Involus, she still looks human, and the flashes of color over her skin aren't as hideous as the woman on my prep team. Tattoos of lush, green vines twirl up her bare arms and disappear under her sleeveless shirt, and I catch sight of similar tracings on her legs under her semi-transparent skirt. I even recognize the species of vine, common ivy.

"Okay, Aviary, that's better," she says softly. Her accent is far more moderate than those of my prep team, somehow softer, more normal, but not in any way I can put my finger on. "I'll be your stylist, as I said, for these Games. Our first project is your chariot ride, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," I say. I expect her to demand more – these Capitol people all seem to throw around words like there's an endless, worthless supply – but Hecate just nods.

"Okay, and I've already got the perfect costume in mind for you. Let me just take a few measurements, and the team and I will start that right away. I'm afraid you'll be on your own again for a while." Hecate steps up to me, pulls away the sheet. Despite, or perhaps because of, my nakedness, she's completely professional. But when your father has to bathe you and dress you every day, you learn pretty fast not to care about being naked around people. Her measuring tape spans my arms, my waist, around my legs, takes measurements I'm sure are completely useless, distance between my ear and my hip, my nose and my belly button. Hecate jots everything down on a notepad, tears the sheet off, and leaves.

Paper.

I reach out and grab the pad. I lift it to my nose, inhale. It's been perfumed, but under that I catch the scent of pine. Home. This paper was made in District Seven – of course, where else – and it's traveled to the Capitol, just like me. It's a piece of home. I may have walked beside the trees this paper came from, may have marked their measurements before the accident. My fingers rub over the surface and my heart sings at the familiar texture. I realize then I've brought no token from home, but that doesn't matter. I want this for my token, I want this paper. I brought nothing with me, and I still get something from home.

Hecate returns before I've gotten over the joy of the paper, all three of the prep team with her. I finally learn the blue-painted woman's name, Leeya, as they circle around me, still on the sofa. I can't bear to look at their faces, Jannit's especially, so for the first time I look around the room. I'm not in the room from before anymore; this one's similar but lacking the medical tones. It's basically the same as the lounge from the train; plush, with more furniture than our house back home, but this room also features mirrors, cabinet, and sets of drawers almost everywhere. Of course, this is where they're going to dress me in a costume for the chariot ride later today.

"I'd like to surprise you, if that's okay, Aviary," Hecate says, smiling mysteriously. "Can you close your eyes, and not open them until we're finished?"

I don't want to, it reminds me too much of the doctors working on me. But Hecate seems so nice, so trustworthy, that eventually I close my eyes as she says. Besides, this is the woman who gave me the pad. 'Gave', or more accurately, 'had' a pad for me to take. I'm pulled to my unfeeling feet, frozen in place somehow, still like a statue. I can't move but I can still feel everything I should, which is absolutely bizarre and almost sends me into a panicking fit. But I close my eyes and wait while my team dresses me. I've got no idea what they're doing, I can't make sense of what my skin is trying to tell me. All I know it's its nothing like being dressed by Father; shirt, pants, done. I can't comprehend what costume could possibly take thirty minutes just to put on, and that's before they start daubing creams and paints all over my face. They get at my hair, too, putting it up and then down and running curlers through it. It's true, there's a lot for them to work with; I'm honestly surprised Father never hacked it off to save him the effort of washing it.

The hands disappear after I've lost track of time, leaving me hovering in the dark. "Open your eyes, Aviary," Hecate says softly.

My eyelids crack open and I catch myself in the mirror. No, not me.

I've disappeared, and I've been replaced by… I have no idea what it is.

Typical of District Seven stylists, they've tried to pull off something tree-related. The only problem is, I'm not sure they've ever actually _seen _a tree.

Gluing chunks of bark to somebody's body and showering them in drying leaves does not make them a tree.

They've drawn vines over my face, I suppose aiming for mystery and intrigue, but I look like I've been viciously slapped and left with half-healing bruises. My flabby, pale skin isn't at all disguised by the bark and the leaves are falling off even as I breathe. My hair's been caught up in a leafy tangle that bears some slight resemblance to branches, but really looks like I haven't brushed it in weeks.

I guess the most tree-related thing they've achieved is that I look like I fell out of one.

I turn to Hecate and my prep team, wanting to scream, to tell them how hideous I am. But they all look so delighted that I can't bear to tell them I hate the sight of myself.

"You look perfect, Aviary. They'll love you."

Love me? Oh, please. Nobody's going to sponsor me now. Any hopes I might have been holding of coming out in my chariot looking like a nymph or even a halfway-decent tree are crushed. I look stupid. Nobody in the Capitol will fall in love with this. They'll probably hope I die as soon as possible so they don't have to look at me anymore. I can't believe I'm going to be on national television wearing this thing. Everybody back home will know who I am and pity my appalling costume, and be thankful it isn't their own child or themselves wearing this travesty.

The team brings me down to the ground floor of the Remake Centre, one enormous hall filled with the chariots and tributes. Two massive doors in one wall hold the entire Capitol outside them. "Over here," Involus mutters, guiding me to our chariot. Kain is already there, with his prep team. He's been done up almost in reverse to me; whereas I have bark with leaf garnish, he's been covered in leaves with strategically arranged bark overlaid. He looks like a bush. We don't even have bushes in Seven. At least we can look stupid together, I guess.

"Hi," he says, looking my costume up and down. "I guess our stylists… are equally talented." I smile back, getting the message; Hecate and Kain's stylist beam at each other, they've totally missed it.

Involus lifts me up into the chariot and belts me into the side. Heavy leather straps secure my legs to the chariot so I won't fall out. I grip the edge with one hand and figure I'll wave the other; if anybody wants to look at me, that is.

The doors grind open and the noise of the Capitol rushes in. District One's chariot rolls out almost immediately, followed after about half a minute by Two's. That means we've got to wait about three minutes for our turn. It must be worse for Twelve, who've got six minutes before they can even start. With time on my hands, and my freedom of movement, I glance around the hall, trying to get a feel for my fellow tributes.

A boy without arms at all. A girl with no face. A boy who looks like he's got nothing wrong with him. A boy who must have turned twelve on the day of the reaping. A girl twisted and hunched over. Another boy who looks undamaged. Those ones, who appear completely healthy, must be the Careers, from the wealthier districts with less dangerous jobs. It's hard to get maimed while making jewelry, so everybody from One is pretty safe; kids don't go into the stone mines until they're out of reaping age, making Two even safer; and fishing accidents are either completely harmless or fatal, so the ones from Four must be fine too. They must have some slight mental disabilities, then. Maybe they're simply the bottom of their class in school or something like that. I'd been hoping that this Quell would mean there were no Careers, but it looks like I was wrong. They probably haven't trained as extensively as the Careers in the normal Games, but they're sure to be more prepared than I am.

Speaking of being unprepared, we're moving.

With a jolt, I panic, before I realize I don't need to worry. The straps are holding me steady. Our chariot rolls outside and I lift my head.

More people than I thought could live in the whole of Panem crowd the streets, almost fighting to get sight of us. Tentatively I raise a hand and wave, and I'm rewarded by a rush of people shouting my name. To their credit, they've got it right; the yells are unmistakably _Aviary, Aviary, Aviary! _I wave harder, more deliberately, allow a smile to creep past my nervousness. Then I see myself on the screen.

They might be shouting my name, but it's surely not because of our costumes. On the screen, in exquisite detail, you can see the terrible job our stylists have done. I look away from the screen and try to focus on the crowd. Maybe one of these people will sponsor me, despite the horrid costume. Maybe enough of them will that I'll survive.

Then I realize, for the first time, really, that my survival means twenty-three deaths.

My eyes slide sideways to Kain and I know that I can't win the Hunger Games, not if it involves killing. As a child, it almost broke my heart to carve into the bark of the trees, and I didn't even know if they could feel it. How much worse must it be to feel a life, an actual human life, slide away under your hands? How many people – children my own age or even younger – would Ihave to kill in order to live? Even if I physically could kill them, which is always questionable, there's no way I actually can. I know I'd rather be killed than kill.

Of course, that's probably what every tribute feels. And most tributes change their minds… I'm afraid of that, too. Afraid that surviving the Games means going against my own nature, against everything I think is important.

But I can't think about this now. That's all going to happen and nothing will stop it, but for now I am on live national television and in front of a crowd of thousands, and I look awful. I wave my arm mechanically and tune my mind to the careful blankness I've used so often to make a day flash by in seconds. I shut down almost completely for the rest of the ride. I only know that President Snow makes a speech because he _always _does, I actually experience none of it. I don't come back out until I blink suddenly and we're in the Training Centre.

The Training Centre is the one aspect of the Games that isn't televised, so I have no idea what's waiting for me in there, especially since my mentor and escort have decided to be solely _Kain's _mentor and escort, so Nile and Angel haven't said a word about it to me, and it's not like I can ask anybody. Technically there's a second mentor, but he's old and senile. I don't even know where he is. I haven't seen him since the first introduction on the train.

Forcibly, the chariot ride returns to my imagination. I could hear the crowd behind us as we went along, dropping our names almost instantly to cheer for the District Eight tributes. And I'm pretty sure their names hung around much longer than Kain's and mine did. Nobody in that crowd will remember us. Nobody will declare excitedly, _I'm sponsoring Aviary Karradi this year! _My mentor doesn't care about me, my escort is ignoring me, my prep team is pathetic and my first public appearance was a disaster.

I'm going to die in a few days, but it's like I'm already gone.


	4. The Training

Once in the Training Centre, my prep team whisks me off the chariot and carries me up to our floor. I can't believe each district gets an entire _floor _of this building. I wouldn't bet against getting the whole of District Seven in here comfortably, and there are only about a hundred people involved in the district teams all up. Our floor is all green-and-brown themed, but the carpets are so soft, the beds so inviting, everything so comfortable that I forgive the cheap attempt at appealing to our industry. The prep team, not without several loud comments about how heavy I am and how they were sure I could walk, drop me in the middle of the bed and leave.

My costume's almost shredded by now, the chariot ride and being carried up here must have been too much for it. I reach down as far as I can and tear the bark off, throw it into a corner of the room. It almost lands short, the room's so big. I don't care that it leaves me naked, I can't bear to look like this pathetic fake tree any longer.

The door opens and a white-dressed Avox slips in. It's not the blond girl from the train, but he reminds me of her. There's a similar look in their eyes: that even though they're our servants, they pity us. That they know we're going to die. He comes over to me, lifts me like I was a baby. Despite the prep team's complaints, I really don't weigh much at all, but it's still moderately impressive that this man can hold my weight like it's actually nothing. He carries me into the bathroom, which has got to be close to the size of our house, and gives me a bath. I think I'm past caring about anything, now; I'm too overwhelmed by the whole Capitol experience to have any space to notice a strange man giving me a bath. I'm asleep before he finishes.

Somehow, when I wake up in the morning it's for no apparent reason at all. Once again, I've slept without nightmares. I feel rested and well, which is good as it's the first day of training today. All I know about training is that it lasts for about a week before the interviews, and the Games start the day after those. Father was always more focused on telling us about the actual Games. I'd hated the stories when he was telling them, but now I wish I'd asked for more. The Avox man carries me to the elevator, and doesn't put me down all through the ride to an underground floor. Even once he's there, he takes me all the way through into the training room itself, before finally setting me down with infinite care on a mat. Why does he care so much about me? Why doesn't he just load me on a sled, like Father used to for any journey of this distance?

He leaves and I look around at my fellow tributes. We're all ghosts, here, doomed to die in weeks, with one exception. I recognize a few from the chariot ride last night. The girl with no face, who's somehow still more human than all the surgically-altered Capitol dwellers, is from Twelve. A boy with no arms, Eight. As I suspected, the ones who appear healthy are all from One, Two and Four, with the exception of a girl from Ten. I catch a few names, as well, but I have no idea who they belong to – Shine, Garnet, Star, Channin. I'm glad I don't know whose name is whose. It would be so much worse to actually know all the dying children. If they're just anonymous faces bleeding to death on the ground, lit up in the sky the night they die, maybe they won't drive me insane.

Or maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll get to die first.

The head trainer outlines the setup – there are training stations around the hall. We're free to move about as we like. There are also doctors on hand to assist with managing our disabilities, we just have to call them over. The healthy tributes all rush for weapons stations and heft the lethal-looking equipment like it's child's play. In a shock, I realize it probably _is_ child's play to them – that their parents probably handed them these weapons as soon as they could walk. I look around for something I can do without looking as pathetic as I did in my costume last night. I spot Kain at a station, but I really don't want to get to know him, since one of us is certain to die. Then I see exactly what I want.

I've no idea what its proper name is, but there's wood and tools. I can carve.

Even when I was a kid, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to carve and work on the luxury furniture that we made in Seven. I wanted to create beauty with my hands. I'd imagine children running their fingers over my carving, wondering aloud how anyone could make such delicate work. It's the one thing common in my life before and after the accident. I carve spare blocks of wood into figurines – all of our childhood toys, I made myself – all of our clothes, I made myself. I can repair almost anything that's handed to me.

Seeing a station filled with the one thing I love about my life is like feeling a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky – or like feeling an axe from a clear blue sky. Only this time, the shock isn't unconsciousness and panic, but joy and desperation. Even if I only have a week of life left, I can spend it doing what I love most.

The thought breaks through me and I shout out for one of the doctors. A white-clad woman breaks off from the group. I shudder at the thought of trusting her to carry me, but brace myself and think of Mom, coming out among all those strangers to see me go.

"That one." I point to the carving station and raise my arms, smiling helplessly. The doctor looks annoyed, but lifts me anyway, far more carelessly than the male Avox did this morning. So if the Avoxes are the criminals, and the doctors are the Capitol's finest, why are the Avoxes the ones who are still human? With a thump, the doctor drops me on my side at the station and I survey the materials.

Chunks of wood, just the perfect size to hold in my hands. A variety of sharp tools, though it's clear they're not intended for carving. I think this station is actually meant for firemaking, but I don't care. I snatch a lump of wood and something sharp with a handle, and focus on my hands, ignoring the instructor who's trying to tell me what I should be doing. Maybe I can pretend I'm deaf.

I think I miss lunch, because when I'm finally finished, I'm starving. I glance up and see the instructor staring openmouthed at what I've produced. Another tribute is sitting beside me – I didn't even notice her arrive – with a smoldering pile of twigs in front of her, but it's clear that all her attention is on me. I look back down and wish I'd carved something else.

It's an anonymous tribute, lying dead with a spear through them. I guess I've had death on my mind a lot, recently. The instructor looks at me, looks at my hands. "What else can you make?"

"I'm not really sure. I've never worked with most of this stuff before…"

He gets a funny look on his face, hands me a pile of thin, whippy branches. "Make me something. Anything."

Slowly, I comb through the pile, getting a feel for what I've got. Thin, but flexible and strong. They're not unlike willow branches, but clearly from an entirely different tree. I start weaving them together, grabbing thinner twigs and threading them through the gaps. It only takes a couple of minutes before I have a sizable and flexible mat.

"Sunshade," the instructor mutters, taking it from me. "Windbreak. Blanket, even. Could probably hold water with a little more effort." He bends it, tugs at the corners, even pulls a branch from it and waits to see if it will fail. It doesn't, and I grin.

He hands me something else, a small, sharp rock and a stick, and almost before I know what I'm doing I've pulled several branches from the mat and tied the rock to the end of the stick. I use it to scrape the bark off of another branch. With this tool, I can make even better things.

The days blur into a whirl of working, so much so that thoughts of the Games don't cross my mind at all. The second day, the instructor has so many more things; rocks and scraps of fabric, branches and more tools, proper tools, and I'm sure they're just for me. Like a proud parent, he lines up the things I've made at the borders of his station. Statues, baskets, blankets, and tools start making a border around the mat.

When the other tributes dash off for lunch, I'm left on the floor with the healthy-looking girl from Ten and two other girls who are also paralysed. Those two are brave enough to call for doctors to carry them to the tables with the other tributes, but I'm terrified of being any more of a burden. The impatience radiating off them when they carry me to the crafting station is scalding.

So it's just the two of us in the empty room. The first day I saw her, she was twisting something around in her hands and giggling. It was about ten minutes before I realized she wasn't actually holding anything, she was just fascinated by her own fingers. She's going to last no time at all in the arena. No wonder she was District Ten's most disabled girl. You could probably kill her without even bothering to sneak up or anything, wave your weapon in front of her face, and she wouldn't notice you.

Mind you, you could probably kill _me _without sneaking up. I'd sure notice, but I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

After lunch it's better, because I can keep working and I don't have to think about anything else. The instructor and I share stories of things we've made – I don't have many, but I drink in his, even if they're mostly about things that burn.

"I'm so sorry, Aviary," the instructor whispers on the final day, brushing my hair out of my face. "I wish there was something I could do. I haven't seen a gift like yours… since my daughter died." He smiles, brushes a tear from his eye, and turns to another tribute sitting beside me. This man had a daughter? How can he sit here and watch other people's daughters preparing to kill each other? Then I realize the answer's right there in his behavior towards me. We're all going to die, anyway, and nobody can stop that. He's trying to make things as good for us as possible before then. This week has been wonderful and I still glow inside from his praise. He's trying to help me. I turn sideways to watch him help a tribute work on a fire. He's helping that kid, too, helping him survive, helping him stay warm in the arena. I've seen fire used as a weapon, too, by Gamemakers and tributes.

There's no goodbye at the end of the day. An Avox just picks me up and carries me away while the instructor's packing his equipment up. I call out to him but I'm still scared and he doesn't hear me. Depressed, I fall asleep instantly, sinking into the bed like water into dirt.

Training's not on the next day. When I wake up, Angel's sitting next to my bed.

"Hey, Aviary, hi… Listen, normally there would be a special training session today, for you to show the Gamemakers specially what you can do… but that's not on this year. Instead of scores, you'll be given a rating based on your disability. Which means that today is for getting ready for the interview tomorrow… But since Kain's the only one with a chance, Nile and I are going to be focused on him… Actually, only with him…" She shakes her head, sending green hair flying, and goes. I blink, force back tears. I don't need any reminders of how hopeless I am. I know I don't have a chance. I _would _if my team were actually doing their jobs. When Father talks about the Games he won, as long as he's not raving about how fantastic it was, he gives tons of credit to his team. He swears he wouldn't have won without the sponsors' gifts, the amazing costumes from his stylist, and the extensive survival lessons from his mentor. I've got none of that. Forget it, I'm in a much worse place than that girl from Ten. I'd guess she doesn't actually know what's going on, whereas I will be aware of every minute in the arena, however few they are.

Somehow I can't even hate Kain for stealing our mentor and our escort. It's not his fault that I'm so useless and pathetic. Rather, I hate myself. I hate that I couldn't think to run away from the falling axe instead of straight along its path. I hate that I never had the ability to kill myself when I wanted to. I hate everything. Hate, hate, hate, hate…

The entire day slides past without anybody coming to check on me. Kain must be busy with Nile and Angel, but I'm so forgotten that I don't even get breakfast or lunch. It doesn't really matter, I'm used to missing meals, but I'm sorry I won't get to enjoy Capitol food again. The patch of sun on the carpet slowly crawls across the room, but it's disappeared with the sunset by the time anybody comes in.

It's Nile, possibly the person I least want to see right now. She must know that I've spent the entire day alone, that I haven't eaten anything, but she says nothing about that. Just, bluntly, "Disability ranks, twelve's good, one's bad. You got three. Kain's up at ten. I said you were hopeless," and she's gone again.

Three! Just two ranks up from the absolute worst! I want to know what the Careers got, and what that girl from Ten got. Was her number higher than mine? Or is paralysis considered deadlier than inattention?

Three. Just more proof that I'm hopeless. Nile's words actually have made me cry, and I'm not exactly surprised. The best week of my life is over – all that carving and weaving and working made the days fly by, but everything from now will be horrible. It's like a signal from the gods that I've had the allocated amount of fun in my life – I've used it all up and I can't get any more – and everything from this point forward will be worse. There is nothing more that I can do.

At least there's only two more days to go. There's the interview tomorrow, and the Games start the day after. I'm virtually certain I'm going to be taken out in the bloodbath. I can't even run away. But, realistically, I know there are always variations in the arena that can aid the most unlikely tribute to survive. I'm pretty sure none of them have ever involved taking someone to safety, though.

Sleep comes slowly, as it always does when I've been in bed all day, and for the first night since coming to the Capitol, my nightmares wake me up.

_I'm at home, lying on the floor. I can see the front door right in front of me. Suddenly Mom's outside, banging on the door, trying to get in. There's a window in the top, I can see her hand pounding on it. Orange light spills in – her hand's on fire – and I know that her entire body is aflame, right outside, burning. I can hear her screaming for help, but I'm the only person here and I can't reach her, can't open the door, can only watch as she slowly crumples, the orange light disappears and I know she's died just inches away from me…_

I shudder and tears drip from my eyes. That one's old and familiar, the one that woke me up just now. What's most awful about it is the realism. I've had dreams about diseases that make you swell up, face go black, and give you projectile vomiting like a hose, hitting people sixty feet away, but I know that it's impossible, and on reflection it's actually pretty funny. The fire dream, though, could really happen – if Mom went outside, and somehow caught fire, and nobody else was home – but it's possible. And I'm useless and helpless, can't even open the door for her, and I watch…

These are not the pictures I want my head to be drawing for me, right now, because if I think about it too much the dream will be with me all day. And since the interviews are tonight, and Nile and Angel have abandoned me, I'll need to give myself all the help I can get, starting with _not _thinking about burning hands I can't heal, screams of help I can't answer…

I try to smack myself in the face. I miss completely and my arm smacks the wall instead. You'd think that all my skill with my hands would help, but it's directing my _arms _that's the problem.

I have to focus on the interview. Nobody else is going to get me through this, so I'll have to do it myself. But my heart falters and I see the vision I'll be presented with tonight, thousands of people, all watching _me_, thousands more in their homes across Panem, listening to my every word… How can I break through shyness of _that _magnitude? If I'm too terrified to talk to people whose _job _it is to listen to me, the prep team and the Avoxes and the doctors, if just the_ thought_ of thousands of people makes me want to jump out of a tree…

I start crying in earnest. Honestly, what else can I do? I can't help myself, nobody else is going to help me, and dreaming of Mom burning to death hasn't helped any. Crying isn't going to really help either, but it can't make anything worse, and who knows, some of the girls back home swear that a good cry can make things look better afterwards.

Besides, if today is anything like yesterday, I've got nothing else to do.

I miss breakfast again – and I never got dinner, either, so that's four meals in a row I've missed – but before lunchtime my prep team comes to get me to make me over for the interview. They work on me for hours, praising what they believe to be stoicness and determination, while really it's just inability to feel a single thing they're doing to me. I close my eyes so I can't see them working, either, and they're so busy that nothing's done about lunch. I ask but they ignore me, floating around me like a miasma, trying to turn me into somebody crowd-winning. If only they knew how hopeless it was.

Hecate enters carrying the outfit I guess I'm going to be wearing. They dress me, complaining about my uncooperativeness and insisting that surely I can get my arm into this sleeve. I've got nothing to say, so I don't, I keep quiet and let them get on with it. Involus lifts me from the table and Leeya maneuvers a mirror in front of me so I can see myself.

I've never really _seen _myself before. There are no mirrors in Seven, and although I saw myself wearing the chariot ride costume, I know I don't look like that normally. I swallow and take a careful inventory of myself.

The clothes are unimpressive. Long green top, maroon pants. Practical and dull. A headband that's trying to look like it's made of leaves, but really it's cheap bits of cloth sewn together. My face, too, is uninteresting; dark eyes, pale skin, hollow and virtually shrunken. My features are what I would describe as sharp but delicate, and that's being generous. My long hair is dark but actually lighter than I thought it was, yet it still makes me look even paler. It's the only feature that actually identifies me as female; if it were short I think I could pass for a boy. And they think that this is going to win the admiration and money of all the Capitol?

I start crying. Abandoned by my mentor and escort, and now the only people who _are _trying to help me have made me look ugly, awkward and stupid, twice over. I've seen some truly wonderful interview costumes – people who look like they're wearing water, or fire, or covered in jewels, or simply plain beautiful. I've seen nymphs from Districts Two, Four, Seven and Twelve – stone, water, trees and fire – comical robots from Three, nostalgic farmers from Eleven, and glittering, glowing wonders from One. And it's surely not that hard to simply make somebody look attractive. I'm not asking for a whole costume, I don't need to be a nymph, but surely _pretty_ isn't too much to ask from the finest beauticians in the Capitol? A few years ago the girl who won didn't have any special costumes or clothes or anything – but she was so beautiful and charming and witty that I, and most of Panem, fell in love on the spot. Maybe I can't do charming and witty, but that's my own fault.

No, it isn't. It's the fault of my mentor and escort, who are supposed to be coaching me through this. I wonder what they'll do if I survive the bloodbath and Kain doesn't. Curse their luck? Immediately switch all attention to me? Throw up their hands and genuinely believe their job is over?

Too soon and yet not soon enough, the prep team takes me down to the stage set up for the interviews, just outside the training centre. I'm totally unprepared for this, my hands are sweating and the world is spinning around me. My stomach aches and even though I'm familiar with hunger, the agony is unbearable. I'm taken from the prep team by two Avoxes who carry me onto the stage and settle me into a propped-up stretcher between two chairs. All along the line, I see only two other stretchers. Everybody else must have at least the control to sit up on their own. The seats begin to fill and to avoid looking at the kid who's going to kill me tomorrow, I glance out over the City Circle. It's packed. Absolutely crammed to bursting. Between the open pavilion for the tributes' teams and the space taken up by the dozens of cameras, you'd think there wouldn't be a lot of space for people. And you'd be wrong. I can't see a single inch of ground because there are so many people. The entire circle and all the streets leading into it are filled. I can't see where the crowds end. And as if that wasn't enough people, everybody across Panem is required to watch, too. Father's probably groaning at the abysmal job my stylists have done, Clarrine's probably thankful she isn't wearing this outfit, and if Mom's come out of her room then she'll be clutching her head, tucked in a corner, trying to block everything out.

The interviews are conducted by Elizabeth Honor, who took over the job about fifteen years ago. She's still quite young by Capitol standards – but to me, at thirty-five, she feels old – but she's popular, hilarious and, best of all, really helps out the tributes. It's so obvious, some of them take one look at the crowd and you'd swear they were about to puke, but Elizabeth calms them right down and, I'd swear, helps some of them win. Father says that's a common factor among all the interviewers, because the Capitol wants to believe we tributes really are something special. She's going to have one big fight on her hands to help me out, though.

But it looks like I'm not the only one in this situation. There are a couple of the tributes who are acting a lot like Mom, and I mean a _lot_. The boy from Four is clutching his head and rocking back and forth, curled up in a tiny little ball, just like Mom used to when she still tried to go outside. The girl from One is similar but not as bad, but I'm pretty sure she won't be able to speak in front of thousands of people. The girl from Ten, who I noticed during training, isn't even here. I've got no idea how their teams even managed to work with these ones who can't bear physical proximity. Medications? Drugs? Could the Capitol really justify knocking someone out just to put makeup on them?

The answer's obvious.

The girl from One, Shine Uniharis, is called up first. Fists clenched, she walks into the spotlight – and takes one look at the crowd and bolts. She's off the stage before anybody gets to her, and then she shrinks into herself and they can't get a response out of her. Very much like Mom. Elizabeth turns to the crowd and laughs a little. "Well, looks like Shine won't be able to have her interview after all. That's because her disability is something called autism, which basically means she doesn't like to be around people. If she doesn't like them so much that she kills them… well, that'll definitely be a big advantage in the arena!"

I can't believe it. She's taken something awful, something pitiable, something that's destroyed my mother and any chance of a relationship I could ever have had with her – and turned it into something that will help Shine in the arena. It strikes to my core like nothing's ever done before. What this girl has – autism, I never knew the name for it but it's got to be what Mom has – is not something that should be used in this way. It's _disgusting_.

All respect I had for Elizabeth has gone out the window. How _dare _she take Shine's disability, that may have prevented her from having friends or close relationships with her family, and make it into a reason to bet on her in the Games? How _dare _this entire country not send its hearts out to her and the people who love her, but instead consider her disability as merely a factor in her potential as a victor?

I'm so shaken and sickened that I miss the next three interviews. The girl from Three – Yliza Karr – is the next one I can take any notice of. She plays herself as insane, able to kill any tribute that crosses her path and not even care about it. She promises them a bloody fight, as long as she's alive. It's a stunning tactic that's sure to get her an entire plantation of sponsors. I'm pretty sure she's not as deranged as she's making herself out to be, but she's probably only exaggerating what's already there.

I can't decide if it's worse for Elizabeth to use a tribute's disability in this way, or for the tribute themselves to do it. There is just something terribly wrong about a child – she looked to be only thirteen or fourteen – saying 'Hey, I'm crazy! Keep me alive so I can slaughter everybody!' but the Capitol's attitude is just exploitative.

But I guess they exploit us all anyway, when you think about it.

Forced labor, food shortages, power cuts, electric fences, no way to appeal against the Peacekeepers' criminal rulings, and of course the Hunger Games.

I tune myself out and stop listening to the interviews, I know they're only going to make me madder. And keeping stock of the tributes' disabilities is only a waste of time. I'm so out of it that I barely hear my name called, and my stretcher rocks as an Avox wheels me up to the stage.

"Well, Aviary," Elizabeth says, dragging my name out to the full four syllables instead of the three that Father usually mangles. Thinking about Father doesn't send a pang of longing through my chest, though, or make me wish I were back home. I just want to know – more than anything – how _he _dealt with all this. "As the daughter of a victor – our own Tirsen Karradi, people!" She turns to the audience and some of them start cheering at Father's name. These people still remember him? Maybe they'll help me out, too? "As the daughter of a victor, you must have grown up with some pretty amazing stories."

"Yeah," I whisper. Suddenly I hate myself for this. Clarrine's voice from the day of the reaping slams into me. _Coward! _Well, I won't do it anymore. I look out at the crowd and suck their strength, their energy, into me. If I'm going out, I'm going with a crash, I'll make the earth shake like when a tree's fallen. I'm not going to be an autumn leaf, slithering apologetically through the air. My head snaps back to face Elizabeth and I inhale sharply. "Loads of stories."

"Do you feel like you know what the Games are really like? Reckon you'll have a better shot than some of the others?"

Honesty grabs me and steers me forward. "Father's stories… they were pretty terrifying. Floods and death… as a little kid they really scared me. But I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. I can't walk, so what chance do I have?"

"Oh, I'm sure you've got something up your sleeve – but don't tell us! There's nothing we love so much as a surprise!"

That leaves me blank. What am I supposed to say to that? _'Me neither?' _I really don't know how to talk to people, how to be interesting. Why won't she say something else…!

"So tell us about home, Aviary. You must have had a pretty tough life."

That's easy. My mind shoots back to school and an essay I wrote about 'home'. The words had really been something special, the teacher had read it out to everybody else. "The thing about District Seven," I begin, seeing my childish scrawl floating in front of Elizabeth's face, "is that everywhere you look, you're surrounded by _life_. You can always see trees, and the houses look like trees, and all the buildings look like trees, and it feels like being in the forest all the time." I glance around the City Circle and suck in what the Capitol looks like. "I mean, here, you've always got all these buildings around you. I know you've got gardens and stuff, but don't you sometimes feel like you'd rather just be _in _the garden, with all this glowing life around you, all the time? That's what Seven's like. It's like you're not in a District at all, it's like being in the wild every single moment. It's really something special, you always feel so free."

I swallow and force myself to keep going. There's an obvious benefit I can draw from this, I can play it to my advantage. Everyone else has been doing it, and I have to give myself _some _kind of a chance… Don't I? "So I'm thinking, maybe I'll be okay in the arena. Everybody else is used to buildings and shelter, but to me, a wilderness will be just like home."

"Well, it's great to hear you're keeping positive. You must have something special kept in reserve, after all, being Tirsen Karradi's daughter! I'm sure we'll be watching out for _you_!" The buzzer goes exactly as she finishes speaking and all the energy flows out of me and I slump back against my stretcher, feeling dried up like charcoal.

I feel sick from talking about myself. I shouldn't have said that last thing about having a chance. I should have gone with something like this, 'Well I guess you could use me as a shield, if you were willing to carry me with you… or just slaughter me on the spot and get one tribute closer to victory…'

After the Avoxes wheel me back into the line I drop my head back and genuinely go to sleep halfway through Kain's interview – he's showing off his burn scars and boasting about how much pain he'll be able to take – and the nightmares are fair trade for getting out of the interviews. I wake up back in my bed in the Training Centre.

The Games officially begin tomorrow.

And my life officially ends tomorrow.

After hearing those interviews, with all those words still searing through my head, tomorrow can't come soon enough.


	5. The Making

When I wake up, I almost think I'm back home. Father will come soon to get me for breakfast, Clarrine will chatter inanely as if to make up for my silence, she'll go to school, Father to work, and I'll stay there, alone, quiet, vanish back inside my head.

Then I remember.

I am going to die.

It's been true for so long – I'm not sure, but I think it's been over a week since the reading of the Quarter Quell. All that time, my imminent death has been so close to my mind that I suppose I'm used to it by now. I have gotten over it.

Because the thought doesn't fill me with fear or anger like it used to. It sort of sits there and waits for some attention, and when it doesn't get it, it goes away.

Rather like me.

My stomach cramps in sudden pain and I remember that I haven't eaten for about three days – the final day of training, the prep day for the interviews, and the interview day itself. I don't know what's happened to the Avoxes, but they haven't come to feed me. I'm actually surprised I'm still alive, given my minimal body mass; I'd assumed that, if I faced starvation in the arena, I'd go pretty quickly, since I have no fat or even muscle reserves.

Starvation. Facing starvation.

Suddenly I am absolutely sure that somebody is deliberately trying to starve me.

Why else would nobody have come to feed me? Why else have I seen nobody in here, not even an Avox sent to clean up? They were so attentive to me that I can't believe they've just forgotten. Somebody has ordered them to let me starve.

Who? It can't be somebody who's running the Games. The only thing more boring than a crippled tribute is a starving crippled tribute. So it's somebody who doesn't care about making a good Games. Somebody who…

My thoughts stop there. I just can't pay attention. The last few days I haven't been able to feel it, but my stomach's in agony and I'm lightheaded. If I turn my head, I see double for a few seconds. I have never been this hungry. I've gone one day, maybe one and a half, without food at home, but that's it. I'd imagined that for training I'd be able to put on some weight, as all the other tributes seem to have. In the past, the kids in the reapings have always – _always_ – been much skinnier that the ones who come into the arena. I'm going to be a strange opposite and wind up even more shrunken and hollow.

I pull up my shirt and peek at my body. I can easily count my ribs, I can see the entire structure poking out from my chest. I've always been really flat, but now whatever breasts I did have are gone beyond even being able to determine where they were. My hands are so thin you can trace not only the bones, but also every tendon and blood vessel in them. My collarbones stick out like branches.

I must look like a skeleton wearing skin. It makes me dizzy just to lift my arms. Well, by now, all it makes is one more thing against me in the arena. I want to go out and apologize to everybody who's bet on me or decided to sponsor me, say I'm sorry for wasting their money. I'll probably die before I even get to the arena.

Something clicks. _That_'_s_ why I'm being starved. Somebody is actually trying to kill me.

Nile. It's got to be Nile. She's the only one with the authority and the imagination to do this. But why? Is she trying to be merciful and save me from the horror of the Games? Or is she just getting Kain one tribute closer to victory? In all honesty, it's not important and I don't care. My death is already a fact. It doesn't matter how, or when, or where.

When Nile comes to get me, her look of sorrow confirms my suspicions. She's definitely disappointed that I'm not dead, although she acts as if I am, directing a pair of Avoxes with a stretcher to take me to the roof without a word to me. The Avoxes, a dark-skinned boy who only looks my age and a gray-haired woman, bring me up to an outdoor floor that I hadn't known existed. There's a garden up here – _grass! _I wail silently – but I'm pretty sure that what we're really here for is the hovercraft floating above us. The Avoxes strap my stretcher to some straps hanging from the hovercraft, and disappear from my sightline as I'm hauled upwards. The hovercraft is small by Capitol standards, yet it still feels roomy and comfortable to me. A doctor – no, not more doctors! – injects something into my arm. Another plot of Nile's? No, it must be the tracker. A few years ago, there was a big deal when all the trackers malfunctioned and none of the cameras knew where to go to film tributes. For a while we were getting shots of nothing but forest.

The hovercraft flies rapidly, faster than the train. Sky and clouds flash past outside, but that's all I see. I wish I could see the ground outside, look down on the Capitol for once, instead of having to look up to it. Just as I'm working up the courage to get the doctor's attention and make a request, the windows black out. I guess we must be getting close, and they don't want us to have any idea where we're going to be.

The hovercraft banks and descends before leveling out and continuing; we must be under the arena. A deeper darkness penetrates the cabin and I have to blink a few times before I can see anything. As soon as we land, the doctor wheels my stretcher out and down a corridor, rapidly, not allowing me any time to take stock of where I am. We arrive in my Launch Room and she leaves me there.

"Aviary!" It's Hecate, rising from her position on a couch. "I've got your uniform right here!"

The doctor leaves and Hecate lifts me from the stretcher with an appalled gasp at my skeletal body. "You've been training much too hard, Aviary! I didn't know it was possible to get this thin on Capitol food! How'd you do it? _Everyone _will want to know how you got so thin! I could probably make a business out of it!" She's so cheerful that I don't want to tell her I'm thin because I've been eating nothing. It wouldn't do any good anyway. Clumsily but kindly, she works me into the tribute uniform; sturdy grey pants, dark red long-sleeve top and tight grey tank over that. And then she hands me my token.

It's the notepad I seized days ago when she was taking my measurements for the chariot ride costume. I remember wanting it desperately for my token, but I hadn't actually told anybody that. Hecate must have noticed how much I clung to it and figured out I'd want it. Suddenly I think she isn't that bad after all.

She rises another notch when she orders lunch; a simple salad with bread and crackers. It's food I can eat by myself, it'll stay down even though I've eaten nothing for days, and last a long time. And, like everything in the Capitol, it's delicious.

Eventually I can't eat any more, although I keep drinking water. The arena could hold anything and I'd rather be prepared, to at least pretend like I have a chance. Desert? Forest? One year there was nothing but water with varying shallow and deep sections. Hecate says nothing. I do nothing except keep sipping at the water and refilling my glass. I never take my eyes off the notepad. It's odd that it's because it reminds me of home that I want it. I've felt no other longings to be back home. Wishes are pointless here.

Time passes, I don't know how long, but I savor it. These are my last minutes of freedom. Now is the last time I will breathe without being afraid that someone can hear me. Now is the last time my blood will not be surging with adrenaline. Now is the last time my heart will pump serenely and softly in my chest. Now is the last time I will not be madly looking for hidden tributes everywhere around me.

Now is the last time that my death cannot be just around the corner.

My heart rate jumps as a male voice announces that it's time for launch. Wordlessly, Hecate lifts me and carries me over to the platform that will raise me. She hesitates before laying me down flat on the shiny metal circle.

"I'm sorry," she says, her first words in hours. "I'm sorry there's nothing more I can do. Just remember you'll have to get off your plate. Given that half the tributes are paralyzed, they might have turned off the mines for your plates, but that's only a guess. Most likely, if you're still on the plate in thirty seconds, you'll be blown up. Remember that. _Move_. I… uh… I don't know how… but you've got to move."

Even now a glass cylinder is rising around the plate, trapping me inside. Only then do I realize that the pad's been left behind. I wave goodbye to Hecate, there's no point in doing anything else, and I think she's actually crying. Then the platform's rising and I am sent into the arena.

I lift my head as far as I can, staring around me. The Cornucopia is shining bright gold in front of me. I can see a couple of tributes on either side of me. The Cornucopia's at the bottom of a massive bowl, with a desert-like area in the middle, where we tributes are now, and then forest starting about a few hundred meters out. I don't know what's beyond the forest, but there's got to be something if this arena is anything like the size of the previous ones I've watched. I can't see any water either in the forest or the desert sections. If there were any, it should be down here in the bottom with us.

But there must be other sources of water somewhere. In past years, there's been water in trees or underground. But this year, the tributes are either too physically disabled to get water from alternate sources, or too mentally disabled to work it out. And the Gamemakers can't have a Quarter Quell where all the tributes simply die of thirst. Therefore, there must be easily accessible water somewhere.

The fact that there's none in the bottom of the basin doesn't actually mean much, now I come to think about it. The Gamemakers can probably turn off gravity.

All in all, it's not actually a very impressive-looking arena. A bowl, half-forest, half-desert. Not the sort of thing I'd expect from a Quarter Quell. In the first one, the twenty-fifth year, the arena was completely empty. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. But there was actually a vast underground cave network that only a few of the tributes managed to find. On the surface you could see your opponents from ages away, but they could see you too. In the caves, another tribute could be lying in wait just around that corner, but you could just as easily lie in wait for them. The second Quell, almost everything was poisonous. The Gamemakers created an arena that made my heart sing, filled with flowers and songbirds and babbling streams. It was more beautiful than anything I'd ever made with my hands or in my head. And all that beauty was toxic. The third Quell, the arena was divided into twelve jungle segments, with a lake in the centre of them. Each segment had a trap inside it; raining blood, a huge carnivorous beast, fog that blistered any exposed skin it touched. But it had seemed a bit rushed, somehow, like it had been planned for another purpose and then quickly adapted to the Quell, or maybe something was missing from it, like the arena had been built on one key idea that had later disappeared. Maybe the original designer died and somebody had to take his place in the middle of the job? Something like that, I'm sure.

So what can they have done with this simple place?

The gong sounds and tributes rush around me. About half head for the Cornucopia and the others dash for the woods. I spot Yliza, the District Three girl, running after the ones headed for the trees, but somehow I know she's hunting, not hiding. My head snaps back around and I see a few other tributes who are still frozen on their plates – two girls who I think are paralyzed like me and the District Ten girl, who's again not taking any notice of what's around her and just looking at something in her hands.

My arms scrabble at the metal circle. My fingers find the edges and grab hold. Gritting my teeth, I start pulling and, inch by inch, I slide off the plate. I fling my arms further above my head, bury them in the sand and keep dragging.

All around the Cornucopia there's shouting and the sounds of smashing flesh. Tributes are brawling over the gold metal and already there's at least four bodies on the ground. My stomach heaves – they died and I didn't even notice – but it's a thousand times worse when I see the District Two boy break a girl's neck with his bare hands. That could have happened to me.

That should have happened to me. Why am I still alive?

The answer's as obvious as it is sickening: I'm not really going anywhere. My feet have cleared the plate, but my arms are burning, and though I keep digging at the sand I've stopped moving.

Clearly the Careers can kill without weapons, but it's got to be a lot easier _with_ weapons. They've killed off the actual competition, and once they stock up, they'll come for me and the two other paralyzed girls, and that girl from Ten who _still _hasn't moved, even though she can. That almost makes me furious. Doesn't she realize what a gift she has, to be able to live that little bit longer, to outrun the Careers? Already there are about a dozen tributes concealed in the woods.

But of course, she doesn't know. She's probably as close as anybody can get to not knowing anything. And instead of anger, I feel pity, pity that this truly helpless girl is to die for the Capitol's pleasure.

A howl from the Cornucopia snaps my attention back. It looks like there are five Careers there, with another five bodies at their feet. It was the boy from One who made that cry, and he makes it again, clearer, "_There's no weapons!"_

_No weapons. _That's what they've done this year.

That's the 'sparkle' in this Quarter Quell. First, too close or too open. Second, poison. Third, segments. Fourth, hand-to-hand combat in the most literal sense.

The Careers give up on the Cornucopia, they've all already got backpacks stuffed with food and other supplies, and spread out. Two of them come right at me. Bitterly, I guess I should feel honored that it takes two to kill me. It's certain that they will, but I'm not going down without a fight.

Without preamble, the girl from Two lunges for my throat. Weakly, I shove at her, but she might as well be solid wood. My air shuts off completely and dizzying black patches start to fade out my vision.

So this is death.

It hurts more than I'd hoped…

"Wait," says the boy with her, and suddenly her hands are gone and I'm sucking in air, warm, bitter, glorious air. "You're Seven, right? In the Training Centre that first day, you made things."

Tentatively, my neck on fire, I nod. "Yeah. Seven." I had no idea that anybody else was watching me, certainly not enough to remember in the arena.

"You think you could make us weapons?"

Make weapons. _Make _weapons. My instant reaction is _no way_. It's almost as horrible as Elizabeth Honor turning tributes' disabilities into Games strategies. I don't want to take my gift and use it to murder children.

Then I glance sideways and catch sight of the girl from Ten being slowly strangled like I was. It must have been going on for nearly a minute, and she's still alive. It's another minute before the boy standing over her lets go. I shudder, barely manage not to throw up. If that boy had had a weapon, it would have been over by now. If the girl standing over me had killed me with one clean stroke, it would have been painless and fast. As it was, the terror and agony of those last seconds burns in my memory. If I arm the Careers, would the other tributes be spared similar horrors?

Decisively, I nod. "Yes." Almost everybody in this arena is going to die anyway, and that's a fact. It's _not _murder, it's _mercy _to arm the Careers and give those other kids swift ends. _Mercy. _I have to hold on to that. Mercy.

A large part of my choice was not altruistic at all. The Careers will keep me alive while I'm useful, and as much as my life sucks right now, I don't want to die. But I know my usefulness will eventually run out, so I'm going to make a weapon for myself. Something sharp and easy to use. If you want something done well, do it yourself. The only person I can trust to give me a painless death is me.

The boy and the girl lift me, each with one of my arms over their shoulders. This is exactly the same way that Lytra and Cel held me up at the reapings. Was that really only a week ago? The desert passes under my feet, hanging in the air, since both of the Careers carrying me are taller than I am. They start to struggle as the curve of the land gets steeper, approaching the trees.

They're odd trees, I can't identify them. They're definitely not from District Seven, they're far too useless to be plantation trees. Too irregular, thin branches spreading out too far. I squint at the bark; they couldn't be made into good paper, either. They might be a food source, though; given the dryness of the arena, they might even be a water source.

It takes time for them to find the other Careers; they must have made an arrangement to meet up, but it's not like they could find their way back, since they hadn't been here before. We're still going by the time the sky's gone dark and stars are visible through the tree branches. Finally I hear voices up ahead and the two Careers carrying me pick up the pace until we enter a clearing. The other three Careers have got here before us, set up camp; basically, a fire and an area cleared of dropped branches. The boy from One, the boy from Three and the girl from Four, and my porters are the tributes from Two. I'm surprised at the boy from Three's presence; usually Three isn't a Career district. But maybe he's useful, like me.

"Girl from Seven," the boy from Two announces as he and his partner drop me to the ground. "Figured she could make us up weapons."

"D-d-did you s-see her-er in the t-t-t-train-in-ing?" the girl from Two asks. Is _that _her disability? A stutter? I'm _paralyzed _and she's the most disabled girl in the district because she _stutters_? "Sh-she m-m-made a net out-t of-of branch-ches, waterpr-pr-proof and everything!"

"Okay, then," the boy from Two says, turning to me. "Oh, hell, get out of the dirt." He bends down and rolls me onto my back, relieving my face from being pressed to the ground. "I like swords, maybe a club, something to swing, with weight. Olivia'll want a bow, right Liv?" The stuttering girl from Two nods. "And you guys?" The boys from One and Three ask for slings, and the girl from Four for a trident and a net. This is going to take a while, but then again, that's the point, isn't it? I want this to take a while. I want to make things, and then die on my own terms. I just don't want to die right away is all.

I close my eyes and start thinking. "I'll need supplies. A lot of them."

"Tell us," says one of the boys. "We'll get your stuff."

"Okay…" A vision of the station in the Training Centre swims across my mind. I imagine building the weapons they've named and compile a list of what I'm using. It's quite long but they're making little prompting noises and I make sure my shyness doesn't silence me.

The tallest boy, I think he's from Two, waves the others into the forest. "And make sure you get _everything_!" He turns back to me and tosses over a packet of dried fruit before settling down on the other side of the fire.

"Name?" he asks bluntly.

"Aviary." Jealously I watch him stretching his legs out, and think of him and the girl carrying me through the forest for hours. I exhausted myself with moving a few feet off the plate.

"You're obvious enough, your legs don't work, huh?"

"Nope." Further responses pour through my head, and, heart beating, I select one. "I got hit in the back with an axe when I was twelve."

"Ouch," he says, without much sympathy. "Guess you want to know what's with us?"

"You don't have to tell me, but if you want…?"

He smirks. "Wow, you really are scared of me, aren't you? Well, I'm Bel. I can't read. It's not my fault, it's the letters, they _move_… Um, then there's Nate from One, he's just clumsy. Liv's from Two, she's got that stutter, but you would have heard that. Leam's from Three and he's got these really shaky hands, he just can't hold them still. And Lily's from Four, she's blind in her left eye. Or was it right…? No, left."

"Wow," I whisper. "Sounds like you guys got off easy."

"It's great," he agrees. "Means we've still got a Career group this year. Can't have the Hunger Games without Careers. _Especially _a Quell."

I scramble for words that won't get me killed. Lily, the girl from Four, returns with an armload of long, flimsy branches for me to net together before I have to speak again. She dumps the lot and drags me over to a tree, propping my torso upright against it before carrying the branches over to me again. I smile thanks before taking up a handful of the branches and set to work.

I've seen the kind of nets the District Four tributes prefer, with gaps of a few inches between strands. Mine can't get quite that wide, but judging by Lily's approving sounds as I continue, I'm doing pretty well. For a while I lose myself in the simplicity of knotting, twisting and tying the branches into one wide net. They're soft, very flexible and strong. I suspect that _that's _the actual point of the trees; excellent material for making weapons. When I finish I immediately progress to the trident. Honestly, it's more of a bi-dent, with only two prongs in the branch, but she's found a good one, strong and sturdy. I reinforce it by stripping other branches of their bark and wrapping it around the bi-dent, and fasten two sharp, thin pieces of flint scavenged from a fire-starting kit to the forked ends. It looks fairly lethal by the time I'm finished. Lily immediately puts it to the test, throwing it across the clearing. It wobbles a bit, but stabs into a tree and stays there. She nods approval and I quash a shudder at what I've created.

By now the other tributes have returned and for the rest of the night, I'm absorbed in the making. I refuse to think of these as instruments of death. These are going to swiftly and mercifully end lives that are already forfeit. I know I would prefer a quick end to something horribly drawn-out, and I have to make that decision for the other tributes too, because I can. I have the power to make a choice, so I have to. I can't walk away from this, close my eyes and hope that when I wake up it will be over. Evasion won't work in the arena. I need to be here, present, and focus.

Slings, then a sword, then a bow, with several accompanying arrows, pass under my hands before I craft myself a knife. It's simple, a thin piece of sharpened stone and a thin but strong handle. I ought to be able to kill myself with this. I string it on a section of braided bark left over from the 'sword' handle – it came out more like a bat, to be honest – and hang the knife around my neck, tucked under my shirt. For the first time I notice I'm chilled and exhausted. I shove myself away from the tree and land closer to the fire.

Just before my eyes drift shut, the sky lights up. Oh, of course, the nightly death toll. There are going to be a lot, this first night. Some of them I saw happen. I _can't _throw up, I _won't_.

The girl from One, the boy from Five, Kain, the girl from Nine, both from Ten, both from Eleven, and the boy from Twelve. That's only nine. I'm honestly surprised, normally the first day – the bloodbath – takes out a lot more. But then, there were no weapons to hunt with. Instead of chasing down the tributes who fled, all the Careers were gathering supplies for me. The only real killer out there, I think, was the girl from Three, the one whose interview was based on her ability to kill anyone and feel nothing, not guilt, not remorse, nothing, except possibly joy. She's probably responsible for a couple of those tributes who died today.

For the first time it genuinely hits me. This is _real_. I am not going to wake up from this. People have already died in this arena. I saw children die today. I could be on national television right now. The things I just made are going to kill real people, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, friends.

I can only hope they feel the same way about a swift end as I do, because the one thing I'm sure about is that these things are lethal. The slings, the bow, the sword/bat, and the trident are all very deadly. But that's a good thing.

Good.

It's _good_.

…isn't it?


	6. The Allying

I don't know exactly how I manage it, but out in the open, with the sky above me, surrounded by armed teens who have already killed other kids, I fall asleep. By the time I wake up, the Careers are gone.

I glance around the campsite. They haven't left me with much. The fire's been out for a long time, with only a few charred sticks remaining. The plastic wrappings from their Cornucopia supplies are scattered around, as well as a couple of things they thought were useless. But then again, I guess they did leave me something. My life. They didn't slaughter me in my sleep. Maybe they figured they owed me for making their weapons. Or maybe they wanted to go hunt some tributes that would take actual effort and energy.

Mind you, these Games have really been lacking in 'effort and energy'. It's strange how the Hunger Games are meant to be all physical and dangerous. I survived the first day by tying bits of wood together. How disappointed must the Capitol audience be with the events so far? All they've seen is a fairly typical bloodbath, and as far as I know nothing else has happened since then. And now I've cheated them of their weaponless Games too. But on the other hand, if the Gamemakers were really furious with me, they probably could have taken me out with a falling tree or landslide or something. Father used to tell me that every natural disaster was engineered by the Gamemakers.

All the other disasters are made by the tributes.

Such as the fact that, out there, right now, children are being hunted down with the weapons that I made. I force down the guilt. I know they will die anyway, I know that. And after my near-death experience, the terror, the useless struggle, the simple awareness that this was the end, I know that I would prefer a clean, quick death. I know I don't want to know I'm dying until I'm dead. I've got to assume that the other tributes feel that way too.

I can't let myself go crazy with guilt. I may not have long to live, but I don't want to lose my last few hours – minutes, maybe – to despair.

Since I can't move, this place is the place I am going to die. I look around more closely. I'm in about the centre of a small clearing, surrounded by those odd trees I don't recognize. The ground's bare, but soft and springy. The Careers' rubbish is slowly being carried away by a light breeze; normally I'd be horrified at the pollution, but this is the arena, it doesn't really matter, and I appreciate being completely among nature again. Birds trill loudly, but far away. I'm thirsty and a little hungry, but with no supplies, I'll just have to deal with it.

Actually, I do have one thing.

I reach under my shirt and pull out the knife I made last night. I've got to keep this close at hand, ready to use in case I'm found by that crazy girl from Three who enjoys killing, or even a tribute without weapons. I don't want to go through all the trouble of securing a quick death for myself and then die slowly and painfully instead.

So what's stopping me from making absolutely sure and killing myself right now? For one, I'm not actually sure I can do it. Faced with the alternative, I'll certainly be able to, but at this moment, with nothing more threatening than a gentle breeze, I've got no motivation. In this particular second, there is nothing I fear more than death.

And really, this isn't so bad. Nobody's life is being drained away to hold up mine. I think of all the hours Father's spent feeding and clothing me, carrying me everywhere, bathing me – things I should have been able to do for myself. I think of Father and Clarrine taking on my share of the work both around the house and in the plantations. Nobody is wasting time on me now. There's only me, lying here, sun on my face, wind stirring my hair.

I close my eyes and drift towards sleep again, finding it easy in the silence.

Silence.

The birds have stopped calling.

My eyes snap open and I'm wide awake. How far away were the birds? How long have they been quiet? Somehow I know they didn't just find another place to be. Something scared them off.

Something like two tributes fighting to the death?

My heart thumps painfully in my chest as the knowledge slams into me – within range of my hearing, somebody is about to die.

The girl from Twelve with no face?

The deaf girl from Five?

The boy from Six who was the 'weakest' because the reaping was on his twelfth birthday?

I don't want to know. I don't want to know who's about to die, I don't even want to know that somebody is about to die.

And then suddenly that isn't true anymore.

Because the cannon fires, and they're not _about _to die.

They have died.

Nausea swamps me and I close my eyes against an emotional barrage that I don't even understand. Joy, that they were killed and I wasn't. Horror, at the ability of a child to kill another. Guilt, that I didn't help the victim out. And a painful, stabbing longing to be somewhere else, anywhere, where there are no children hunting for others who had the back luck to end up here.

If the Capitol filled the Games with condemned criminals, it would be different. If the Games were used to punish the people who had actually committed crimes, it would be reprehensible, but more understandable than killing children for more or less no reason. It's just plain _stupid_ when you really think about it – the Games even hurt the Capitol, it's like they don't realize that killing off twenty-three members of their workforce every year is going to come back to them. And these children have done _nothing_. I have done _nothing _with my life other than do my job, when I could, and lie on my back doing literally nothing, after the accident. I have said nothing against the Capitol. I have taken part in no strikes, in no protests, I have done _nothing_.

And because of some words written on a card a century ago, I am going to die for no reason.

In the districts we're all very aware of the immediacy of death. Out there we don't have the resources to hide death. We don't have the time to travel to a graveyard that's kept out of sight, so it's right in town with us. We have too many deaths to keep the children from finding out that they happen. But more prominently, we're raised watching the Hunger Games, so we're all familiar with blood and gore and violence. But even more than that, we watch two children from our district leave every year, die on television, and return to us in wooden boxes. No child can be ignorant of death.

But even all that hasn't prepared me for what I'm feeling now. Despite telling myself that joy at my own survival at the cost of theirs is sickening, and guilt that I couldn't help is stupid, I still feel them both. I couldn't have helped them, I didn't know where they were, and if I had I couldn't have gotten there, and if I'd been there I could have done nothing – but despite the indisputable logic and truth of it, I'm still guilty. And despite knowing that I had absolutely no effect on what happened, and that somebody's dead, I'm still happy it wasn't me. That the time the hunter spent on murdering that other tribute is time that I had to continue living. That maybe, the other tribute caught the hunter's attention and led them away from me.

All it comes down to is that I am alive and they are dead. That I have outlived somebody's child, somebody's sibling, somebody's best friend.

Put like that, it's hardly something to be proud of.

I try to empty my mind again, return to the state I was in just minutes ago, before I noticed the birds had gone silent. Just like I don't want to be consumed by guilt over making the weapons for the Careers, I don't want to debate morality with myself for the rest of my life. I am here. I will always be here.

There's a lot to appreciate here, though. It's quiet, and sheltered, and the breeze and sun are lovely. I haven't been outside in too long. Back in Seven I basically stayed inside all day because it was too hard to ask to be taken outdoors, and then there was all the work for Father in carrying me out and then back in again. I didn't ask and he didn't volunteer, and sometimes I went for weeks without leaving the house. Without work or school, there really wasn't anything to do. I didn't mind doing nothing, I could keep myself entertained inside my head, but I would have preferred to do it in the sun and wind.

At least I have that now.

So I close my eyes and drift towards, if not sleep, a detached place where nothing in the Games can touch me. A place where I don't care about dead children or killer children or my own fate. Here, I know only the warm sun on my skin and the gentle breeze drifting across me. Here, I know peace and stillness.

When I open my eyes again, it's because I can't ignore the blaring anthem. Night's fallen, and the sky is clear and starry. I've never seen so many stars at night. Even in Seven, we have enough electric lights to block out the sky a little, but out here there's nothing between me and infinity. Until there's a flash of light, and the face of the boy from One.

Of course. The tributes who died today get shown again to us all. How could I have forgotten this?

The boy from One is followed by the boy from Four, the girl from Five, the girl from Six, the boy from Eight and the boy from Nine. My jaw drops. _Six _deaths? I missed five cannons? I run a quick count on my fingers. That leaves four armed Careers and the crazy killer girl from Three – so five threats – and only four other tributes including me. I can't believe there's only nine of us left. Normally it takes days, or even weeks, to get down to nine tributes. But this year, after a bloodbath taking out nine, six tributes died on only the second day. There must have been some major fight out there, a real showdown that I wasn't even aware of. How can six people die without being noticed? Okay, so I noticed the first one, and I _was_ half-asleep for the rest of the day, but I should have noticed a massive fight like that! There must have been a fight; I can't believe that five tributes were killed separately.

Actually, given the nature of the girl from Three, I _can_ believe that she hunted down five people in one day. I wonder where she got her weapons. Certainly not from me, unless she was the one who killed the boy from One and took the sling I made for him. I can't think of anybody else in these Games capable of taking down a Career.

I can't believe I've survived not only the bloodbath, but also the second day. How is it that nobody has found me yet?

I'm silent. That's what it is.

I'm not moving, talking, eating, or anything that makes sound. I can't light a fire. The only way to find me would be to stumble into my clearing by accident. And I think this is a pretty big arena, as they go. It's possible I'll starve to death before I'm found.

That could take a little while, though. The meal I had before entering the arena and the food the Careers shared with me are still holding me together. I don't feel the dizziness that I did after three days without food when Nile tried to starve me to death before the Games began. I'll probably be okay for another day at least.

I just have to make sure I'm still able to use that knife. I can't let myself get beyond the point of being able to kill myself. I can't let myself starve just in case I'm found before the very end.

But I guess I can do this. It's the end of the second day, and I'm still alive. I've been lucky so far. Maybe I'll be lucky for a little longer.

I sleep through the night but wake up soaking wet. I'm utterly drenched and really uncomfortable, since the sun isn't up yet so I'm both wet and cold. It must have rained overnight – in fact I can still barely make out the clouds above me – and I'm sorry I slept through it, since I've lost a good chance to get some water into me. I still feel okay, though, so maybe I can drink in my sleep or something.

_Snap! _My head jerks to the left and I scan the woods frantically, trying to find what made that sound. It was definitely a branch breaking, and it wasn't very far away… Is now the time to pull out my knife and kill myself? Before my would-be murderer sees me, defenseless, helpless?

Somebody jumps down from one of the trees. They've seen me, they must have. They're coming closer. Now is the time. Now I have to grab the knife and plunge-

My arms flap and the knife barely taps my chest before sliding off. I raise it again; it weighs more than I can imagine.

Why, _why _didn't I think of this? I'd been so preoccupied with hunger and thirst and sleep that I forgot the most likely reason for being unable to use it – weakness. I'd fought through it so hard yesterday that I hadn't allowed myself to notice how heavy everything was, how exhausted I felt.

I am too weak to shove this knife into my chest.

My heart pounds painfully and all I can hope for is that I've been found by a Career, lethally armed, or if not, they'll at least think to use the knife lying in plain sight. I hope it's not the girl from Three who's going to enjoy killing me far too much to make it over with quickly.

A head pops into view and I'm so shocked that I forget all about my death.

It's the girl from Twelve.

The one without a face.

I haven't been close to her before, only seen her at a distance in training and the interviews. Her face is nothing but roughly textured skin with tiny dark slits for her nose and eyes and ears, and an unframed hole for her mouth. Her red hair is short, hacked off, like she's just grabbed chunks and sliced through them without a plan or style. I don't know how she's managed to find me, she's got to be nearly blind and deaf, if not totally. Something about her skin is bugging me, though. Aside from the true hideousness of it, it looks familiar.

Then I see it. It's just like Kain's.

She's lost her face in a fire. She's been so badly burned her flesh has melted like candle wax and run into this new shape – I don't know if that's actually possible, but that's sure what it looks like.

"Hey you," she says, and her voice is almost as husky and harsh as Mom's – Mom's is damaged because she never uses it, but this girl's throat must have been ruined in the same fire. I think of all the smoke a blaze that hot must have produced – especially since, in Twelve, it was almost certainly a coal fire. "Seven!"

"Yeah?" I don't know why she's speaking to me, why I'm not dead yet.

Unless she's not sure I'm here, and by answering I've just confirmed my position…

If I could, I'd freeze absolutely, but that's really a moot point. It's all moot now, anyway. She's seen me, and she steps forward into the clearing. I see her hands are burned like her face, but she walks with a graceful ease that I envy from the bottom of my heart.

"You make weapons, huh? The ones the Careers have, they're yours, aren't they?"

"Yeah…"

"Wanna make some more?"

I nod. I do, but I can't right now. She's got to see that, she's got to give me a chance, I could be better tomorrow…

She comes closer and taps one of my arms with her booted foot. "You're all out today, huh? Nothing moving?"

"Not today," I whisper. "I need food… and rest… but I'll be fine, I promise!" Desperation surges and I realize I have to make her believe I can make weapons for her. Otherwise, I'm no use, and she might as well kill me.

I guess I'm scared of dying after all… for now.

She frowns, seems to consider something. Then she bends down to sit next to me. "I'll wait. Got nothing better to do. Besides, I can take this…" and she picks up my knife. "I'm Garnet, by the way," she says as she hides my knife – her knife, now – from sight.

"I'm Aviary."

"So, if you're tired out, I'll get you some stuff to work with while your resting. What do you want?"

Heart pounding, I give her the same list as I gave the Careers. I'm not exactly sure what she wants, but I don't want to ask. I'll just make her one of everything. Eventually I run out of ideas and close my mouth. Without saying anything, she heads for the woods.

The sun's in the centre of the sky by the time she returns, staggering under a massive load of branches, twigs, bark and leaves of various kinds. I don't know where she found half of this stuff, I've only seen the one kind of tree here, but I haven't explored any further away from the Cornucopia than this. Maybe further out there are different species.

"I know you can't use this today, but you can at least think about it. And about food, um, I guess I'd have to feed you… eh. I'll do it. You're no good to me dead, and don't worry, I have four kid siblings. I'm used to caring for babies."

It irks me that she calls me a baby, but I'm too grateful for the food to complain. With a surprising amount of gentleness – up until now she's seemed the rough kind – she gets an entire pack of dried beef and half a liter of water into me.

"You know we're probably on live television right now?" she says, chewing slowly on a hunk of dried fruit. "This alliance has got to be the only interesting thing going on at the moment."

Alliance? I didn't realize we were that formal. I thought it would be more like what I did for the Careers – I give them weapons and they give me my life. I guess Garnet wants a bit more than that, though I don't know what else I have to offer her. She can fetch food and water, and I can make her weapons, but eventually she won't need any more weapons, whereas I will always need food and water to survive. But if she wants an alliance, I'm happy with that, because it means I get to live longer.

"So, I'm going to go scout, try and bring some more stuff back. I guess I don't need to tell you to stay here." Silently, she drifts into the woods and within seconds I can't see her anymore.

Garnet seems very odd to me. It doesn't help that her face is all wrong, with no real features, only black holes in her burned skin. But she's strangely at home here, as though nothing's changed. I'm unfazed by my surroundings partly because I grew up around trees, but mostly because they don't much matter. Given that I can't do anything, I'd be in exactly the same position in whatever environment I was dropped into. But Garnet's from Twelve, and they can't have many trees around there, with all the coal dust. Why is she so at home with the forest around us? Why is she, who has a chance to win the Games, not hysterical with panic and throwing everything she can into her own survival? It's like none of this really matters to her. It's all mundane, normal even. Not to mention her competence in finding the supplies for me to work with and casually going off to 'scout' just now.

Garnet is weird, there's no denying. But she's also keeping me alive. Although honestly, how many judgments can I make about her? I've known her for a few hours, and most of that she was away collecting supplies for making weapons. I do want to know who she is, want to find out more about this girl who holds my life in her hands, but I'm going to have to wait.

I never thought the Hunger Games would involve so much waiting, and maybe in a normal one, it wouldn't. In a normal Games, I'd already be dead. But in _these_ Games I have something valuable. I am possibly the only source for well-made weapons here. All throughout training, I didn't see any other tributes making things like I did on that first day. In a normal Games, with the Cornucopia packed full of things for the taking, I would have been killed almost instantly, I'm sure. Even in these Games I came close to being a bloodbath death, until the boy from Two figured that I could arm him and the other Careers. Now it's the third day, I'm still alive, and I'm in an alliance.

For the first time it hits me that I may actually survive. With Garnet feeding me, I'm in no danger of starving. I'm well hidden here, making no sound or sign to give away my position. If something happens to take out the other tributes – like the Careers turning on each other and maybe a well-placed natural disaster, and something kills Garnet too, I could survive just by hiding out here and letting it all go past me.

With a bit of luck, I could actually win. Father would be disappointed that I simply out-lived the others, but I'd be alive. And while I'm alive, things can change.

While I'm alive, I can win.

And if I can win, I can make this all go away. I can go back home and pretend none of this every happened. Things will be better, I'll be a victor in my own right. I'll hire somebody to carry me around like the Avoxes here in the Capitol. I'll have things brought to me, carving supplies, wood and tools. I'll spend my time outdoors, maybe build a pavilion or a platform for myself. I'll be able to do that; or anyway, somebody will do it for me. I'll actually be able to live.

How strange that death can save me from death.


	7. The Befriending

Garnet's gone for several hours and the sun's gone from the sky by the time she comes back, silent and unseen until she's right in the open.

"Hey," she says, dropping to the ground and tucking her legs in underneath her. "Nobody's near us. Best guess says they're all wrapped up for the night. Those weapons the Careers have, not bad, but can't handle fighting in the dark."

I glance over her profile, outlined smoothly in the moonlight. Her face looks like a single curve, almost the same shape as the moon in the sky. In the darkness, I can't see the burns marking her skin, but the lack of normal features is obvious. I never thought of how human a nose and a mouth can make you, but only after meeting Garnet, who doesn't have either, have I really noticed how important being normal is. Even now I double-take when I look at her, because I'm still expecting to be looking at a face, and long story short, she doesn't have one.

Beyond the fact that she must have been in some kind of fire, I don't know anything else about her past. She's from Twelve, but that's one of the multi-classed districts; she could have grown up starving or pretty well-fed. I don't know if she's got siblings, living parents, or friends. I don't know what's driving her to win the Games – after the massive amount of weapon-making supplies she brought for me, she's definitely out to win.

So if she's going to win, I have to die.

Is one of us going to have to kill the other? I know for sure that I can't handle her; if I want her dead then the best I can hope for is that she'll die from something or someone else. But she's fed me, and talked to me, and it's pretty dodgy to want her dead. She didn't have to help me out like this. But only one of us can come out of here. Strong allies have tried to both survive before; it's never worked. Something always happens to take out one of them – one year, both died.

"So," Garnet says now, "are you just gonna lie there or what?"

I roll my eyes at her, lift my arms and gesture at the pile of materials. "I'm over here. The stuff's over there."

She looks embarrassed, mutters "oh, right," and drags the dying greenery over in bunches. I shove myself onto my side, get as comfortable as possible, and start working.

The same doubts that plagued me when I was working for the Careers run through my mind again. If Garnet has her way, the wood and bark I'm working with will be used to kill other tributes. And it may not be in self-defense, either. They could just be sitting there, not unlike I am right now, and Garnet sneaks up behind them and-

My vision blacks out and my head fills with blood, bone and skin spread across my imagination. I hear screams, children dying, pleading for their lives. I see again the girl from Ten, who wouldn't have noticed an earthquake, being strangled and unaware of it. Fragments from the bloodbath swim through my mind again, other tributes who I already could tell apart from each other – the paralyzed boy from Five, the blind boy from Ten, the hunchbacked girl from Eleven. I create a whole army of siblings, teary parents, horrified friends who watched them die hundreds of miles away, unable to hold or comfort them.

The Games takes us all in the end. The twenty-three tributes who die in the arena; their grieving families and loved ones; the survivor, forced to parade before all of Panem, dragged out again at functions and Capitol parties; the children of the districts who live with the guilt of not volunteering to save another's life; the parents who every year face the terror of losing their child; even the people in the districts who have no personal stake in the Games are forced to watch the live broadcasts, forced to watch children they saw growing up be slaughtered. Distraught, horrified faces fill my thoughts, spinning and spinning, screaming, ripping at me with their pain-

"Wake _up!_" Garnet's hand smacks my face, which suddenly hurts much more than it should; not the first time she's hit me, apparently. "Finally! You just blacked out and… you were convulsing or something. Do you have fits or anything?"

"I used to… but not for ages." Not since back before the accident. I was allergic to most kinds of sap, and breathing it in could knock me out or throw me across a room. But after the accident, either my body was too wrecked to fizzle like that, or my virtual house arrest kept me away from allergens. Being surrounded by all these strange trees and working closely with their wood, it's a bit surprising that it hasn't happened before. But the hallucinations are new. I never experienced the fits; I'd just wake up and have no idea where the minutes had gone. I've never seen things before.

Maybe, if I get out of here, the Capitol doctors will fix me up?

Before I can figure out whether I want to let them touch me or not, I realize Garnet's still waiting for an answer. "Yeah, I guess. I'm allergic to sap, I guess being outside isn't too good for me."

"Wow, you _really _suck, don't you?" Garnet holds up long fingers and counts off. "Paralyzed, fits… ugly… I'm kidding!" she adds before I can lurch upward in anger. "You're actually pretty cute, to be honest." She smiles awkwardly and looks down.

I've never thought about how I look before. Body-image is really only important when you have a body, and there was never any point in getting worked up about it when there was nothing I could do to fix any problems I found. And while Father's a victor, we're far from rich, and there weren't any mirrors in our house for me to see myself in. I barely know what I look like. I saw myself for the first time back during preparation for my interviews; I can't remember my actual face, only what I said about it: sharp but delicate.

Garnet's waiting and I have to say something. "Tell me about yourself?" She looks surprised. Hastily, I give her a better idea of what I want to know, just like Elizabeth Honor in the interview did for me. "Why are you trying to win?"

"Oh, that," she says, sounding oddly relieved. "That's easy. I've got four siblings back home, all younger than me. Mom and Dad do their best, but they're so busy working they're really got nothing left over to love with. So I kiss them goodnight and wave goodbye when they go to school… just try and remind them that they're loved. That life isn't great, but I'll always have time for them."

Wow. Why couldn't Garnet have been my sister? I wish somebody had thought that I needed love, too – that even though I don't ask for it, I do need it. I spend enough time trapped in my head, unable to get out, and when I'm able to respond, there's still nobody to respond to.

I don't have to search for the next question, it's obvious. "What are their names?"

"Emmy – that's Emerald, Jaz, uh, Jasper, Agate and Topaz." She grimaces a little. "Kind of pretentious, I know, all gemstones. Blame our parents. They figured there was enough coal-mining going on that we should remember there are other things underground than just ugliness." She shrugs, sighs. "What about you? Guessing you're harder on your parents than I am on mine?"

This time the words just come without thinking or planning. "My father won his Games and thinks they're the best thing in the world, my mom never comes out of her room and can't speak to me, and my sister Clarrine and I have nothing to say to each other." Now I'm talking, I can't stop. "I spend my entire day inside, nobody talks to me, I'm mostly forgotten." Considering Garnet's story, I hesitate before adding, "I'm not fighting for them. I just want to live. I don't want the Games to beat me."

Her brow wrinkles and one eyebrow rises skeptically. "Are you serious? You not actually fighting _for _anyone?"

I shake my head.

"So why shouldn't I kill you right now?"

I've run out of words. I point at the pile of materials next to me.

"Oh, right, you're not finished yet. Still, when you are, you're saying that you just wanna live, while I've got four siblings who need me?"

It's not like that, I don't think that my claim to life is worth more than hers or anything… but I want to live. That's all. I know she may be more deserving, and she's definitely more needed than I am, but I want to get out of here too.

Abruptly, the sky above flares and the anthem plays. I turn my eyes upward, but no faces show. Nobody died today. Maybe, like us, everybody else is hiding out and stocking up for the next few days. Garnet didn't just bring stuff for me to make into weapons; there's food from the Cornucopia, still wrapped in plastic, and some food from the forest. No water, though. That's going to be a problem, unless it rains…

Or unless my team got off their butts and actually helped me out! I'd totally forgotten about them until now. They devoted everything to Kain and ignored me, which has got to have humiliated them when Kain got taken out in the bloodbath and I survived. But they're sent me nothing. Somebody's got to be sponsoring me, surely? The Capitol audience is so huge that _somebody_'s got to be pitying me. Nile must have something to send me, but I've seen nothing. How hard would it be for her to drop in one bottle?

And what about Garnet? Does she have sponsors? She's strong, capable, and Twelve's a popular underdog district. She _must _have sponsors lining up. Can I rely on her sharing with me?

"Nobody died, huh?" Garnet points at the dark sky. "I kind of expected that, honestly. The Careers got hit pretty hard yesterday. Can you _believe _it, but the other losers around here set them up!"

The _Careers _got set up? They're the only ones in this whole arena who are armed, and as far as I know, they're the only group. Then again, what do I know? I didn't even know there was a big fight yesterday until I saw the count in the sky. I know absolutely nothing about any of the other tributes.

"Yeah, a bunch of the hopeless tributes managed to get together, figured they might as well try and take down the Careers. Stupid idea, but there are some actual-" she gives a two-tone whistle and spins her finger in circles around her ear, and even I recognize the symbol for 'crazy' "-in here. So the Careers come along, right, toting these real pro weapons, your work, huh? And they see this kid lying on the ground, right in the open, in that desert bit in the middle of the arena, couple of meters from the trees. They all rush out at him, and – get this! The other tributes _jump out of the trees _and knock them _all _down!"

My jaw drops, my head swims with pictures of the ambush. Garnet rocks back to the ground, laughing, clutching her stomach. Mentally I add 'weird sense of humor' to the slowly growing list of what I know about Garnet.

She splutters, gulps in air, manages to sit up and get her laughter under control. "So those Careers, _damn _are they pissed! There's this massive brawl, and of course they're the armed ones, so four of those other kids are taken down. But, they got one of the Careers, the boy from One." She holds up her fingers and runs a count. "So, both from Two, the boy from Three and the girl from Four. That's all that's left of the Career pack?"

I nod agreement. I saw all of them, made their weapons. I remember Bel, the boy from Two who can't read, Liv with the stutter, clumsy Nate who died yesterday, half-blind Lily and Leam's shaking hands.

"So four Careers, Yliza from Three, Brion from Six, Ketra from Eight and us."

I don't ask where she learned the names of the other tributes. Maybe, like me, she made a temporary alliance with them. Or maybe she just paid more attention in training and during the interviews.

"I bet everybody else is asleep by now," Garnet says thoughtfully, looking up at the sky. "It's probably safe not to keep watch. I'm the only person who's found you, and that was by accident."

I'm relieved she's not going to stay awake to keep me safe while I sleep. I'd be a fairly useless guard, considering I can't fight off an intruder. I wriggle into a more comfortable position and Garnet pulls a blanket from her backpack, hidden under the pile of weapon supplies from the forest.

"Night, then," she says. "I'll probably go out tomorrow, try and thin the field a bit…"

My blood chills at the casual way she talks about killing tributes. They're somebody's family, somebody's sons and daughters, somebody's best friend, somebody's confidante… But now they belong to the Capitol, just like us.

I shake my head, try not to think about it. I've managed to sleep twice already in this arena. I've just got to try again.

When I wake up, Garnet's already gone. She's written a note on some paper – _Keep making weapons. Left some food. Make sure it lasts all day, I'll be back at sundown. _

Great. She wants me to make things to kill people with, while she's out killing people.

I grit my teeth and try to copy her, try not to think about what I'm doing. I just focus and do what I need to do. I have to be grateful my arms are working today. I have to focus on just the joy I get out of making things. I can't picture tributes impaled on the ends of these weapons.

It works; the entire day disappears while I'm working. So does the next day, and the day after that. I don't quite know how I manage it, but for a whole three days I do nothing but work with what Garnet brings me. After she can't carry anything more, I turn with joy to making things that aren't deadly. A blanket from soft bark and grass, a waterproof bowl to catch rainwater in, and a sharp flint blade for carving chunks of wood. Apart from the two cannons that fire in the three days I'm working, the Games barely intrude. It's almost like it isn't happening. They slide past like water over leaves, I could be at home during one of my rare trips outside. The only reminder of the Games is Garnet, who returns covered in mud, or blood, or just rumpled with twigs caught in her hair and scratches from whippy branches marking her arms.

I don't know what she does out there all day, and I really don't want to. I know that she's just trying to get home to her siblings; siblings that love her, rather than ones who are annoyed they have to share a house. I know that every tribute who dies out there is a tribute that can't kill me. But it's still too awful to forgive her for. I know I would never forgive myself if a tribute died at my hands. I don't know how Garnet can be so casual about it.

She drops in during the day occasionally, to leave a broken weapon or hand over food that she's foraged. During these brief visits she's always tense and silent, but in the evenings she really opens up. We share – slowly, on my part – stories from home. Garnet's family far outshines mine; her parents, hardworking but dedicated to all five of their children, loving siblings who support each other and swap schoolwork for chores according to carefully calculated values. She listens to my tales almost like they're horror stories; my uncaring, Games-obsessed father, Mom, with the autism that won't let her touch or look at me, and Clarrine, who I would be willing to bet is thankful that she has Father's attention all to herself.

I eventually find out why Garnet finds killing so easy. It's not what I thought, that she's just determined to get home. Like the girl from Three, Garnet just doesn't _care _about killing people. Unlike Yliza, she doesn't enjoy it, but she's not losing any sleep over it. It's just as easy for her to kill the tributes out there as to pick fruit from the trees. It's not entertaining or wonderful or anything, it just doesn't matter.

It's frightening that she holds no value for my life. Beyond making weapons – which I've already finished doing – there's no point in me being here.

Anytime, she could kill me. I think she just can't be bothered right now. There are tributes out there, especially the Careers, who are going to take a lot of time and energy to hunt down, unlike me; Garnet knows exactly where I am and how defenseless I am. She doesn't need to exert herself to take me out.

And I think, like me, she enjoys the companionship. Her obvious dedication to her siblings is proof that she's capable of attaching to other people. Even though I still fight against my shyness, and I keep not having words to say what I want to say, and she struggles to hear me, we manage long conversations in the dark.

I've never had an actual friend before. The girls back in Seven put up with me, but that was it. I'd always been a bit of a loner before the accident, but after I was paralyzed I couldn't go to school, let alone visit anybody.

But I don't need to go anywhere in the arena. Garnet's bringing me everything I need and it's not like I want to go hunting like she does. I've had fantastic luck, and maybe if it holds up a bit longer, I'll survive. It's already been a week in the arena, and I'm alive, and I haven't killed anyone. I'm doing just fine.

Maybe 'just fine' may be a slight exaggeration. There's not a lot of food going around in the arena, and Garnet takes most of it – quite fairly, because she's out all day while I lie on my back doing nothing. But that means I'm generally pretty hungry. Not much water, either; I've made a couple of bowls to catch rainwater but there hasn't been any rain.

Just as I'm thinking about water, I hear a rushing over to my left. Garnet climbs warily to her feet and I prop myself up, painful on my pathetically weak arms, but I can't not look for what's going on.

"Something's moving," Garnet says. "I'm gonna check it out." I want her to stay – I know I can't defend myself, but I don't ask. I feel like I could, but she knows what she's doing. Garnet's calm and composed as she grips a knife in one hand and a heavy club in the other. She's gone and I'm alone in the dark. The loneliness cuts particularly sharply, because now I think about it, I've talked to Garnet in these five days more than I've talked in the years since the accident. For the first time in almost forever, I've held my end of a conversation. It didn't take long for me to get used to having her around.

And I don't want her to leave me alone. It's not just because I want her to protect me from what's out there – it's that I prefer her company to her absence.

She's tough and seems a little unfriendly, and her mental space is very dark and odd, but I think overall, she's really just direct and practical. And she's definitely fighting hard to get back to her siblings. I try not to think about the dead tributes, the eight that have died since the bloodbath, try not to think of Garnet taking their lives. I'm sure, _sure_, that she can't have been responsible for them all, but one or two, maybe three, died because of her…?

If not her, then somebody else, for sure. In here we're all marked for death, and only one's going to escape. And Garnet can't possibly be as lethal as the Careers; anybody that she killed would surely have been killed by the Careers instead, if she hadn't gotten there first. Not to mention that crazy girl from Three, Yliza, who _enjoys _killing people, she's still out there.

I can't help wondering who's finally going to kill me. Despite my former plans, I'm not actually able to kill myself anymore. Garnet stole my knife, and as I've learned, even if I had it I can't actually drive it into my chest. And I'm kind of over that death wish now. For the moment, Garnet's protecting me, and with only a handful of other tributes out there, I might just outlive everybody. But far more likely, I _will _die. My killer might easily be Garnet herself, upon deciding to end the alliance. I can see her finishing like that; most alliances split up with the tributes going in two different directions, but given Garnet's uncaring attitude towards human lives, she'll probably kill me so she's got nothing to come back for. Even the Careers had more honor than that.

Then again, given what's come of their act of thanks – leaving me alive after I'd armed them – it's not come out well. I've armed Garnet, who's now probably equal to any one of them on their own. In terms of their survival, it would have been better for them to kill me that first night.

Honor or stupidity? Treachery or practicality? It all depends on the words I use. The Careers were either good at heart, or just plain idiots. Garnet's either a ruthless backstabber, or determined to get home.

I sigh and close my eyes. I've seen the Games do funny stuff to people's heads; even those back in the districts can get a bit unbalanced just from watching. The single kid who comes out is always so different to the one who went in. But I've never thought about what it must be like to be a tribute actually in the Games, to be surrounded by death and humanity at its worst.

Why would the Capitol-

Why am I wet?

My head snaps around. I'm lying in an inch of water. Half the branches around me have already been washed away. My tribute uniform is completely soaked. My hair's gotten all tangled. The water's getting deeper all the time.

My breath speeds up. My heart's thumping painfully. Father's stories of the Games flash through my head.

_They control the weather, you know, rain or snow or hail, it's all them. And disasters, too, fires and floods and earthquakes. One year the mountain turned out to be a volcano. Took out half the field. The year I won, there was fog so thick you couldn't see your nose._

The Gamemakers, they've made the arena flood. There's nothing in my reach, nothing solid I can grab. I close my eyes and grit my teeth. Of all the ways I thought I'd die here, I'd never pictured drowning.

Obviously I can't swim. I start taking massive breaths, try to hold on to some air. The water's already over my chest. It's all rushing downhill, towards the Cornucopia. The current's strong. I'm sliding out of the clearing. I crane my neck, fight to keep my head out of the water. My body sags downwards. My feet are sticking in the mud like roots. I close my eyes, try to relax. Got to conserve my air. These trees around me aren't very strong; grabbing one of the branches only results in it tearing away from the trunk. I'm not even moving very fast and the trees are still too weak to hold my weight. I'm way too uncoordinated to slam into one from behind. The current swirls more, spinning me around. Where's Garnet? Where's everybody else? Are they out of the flood, climbing trees to keep themselves safe? Or are they caught up too, helpless, like me?

The water stings my chapped lips and I'm surprised, it's salty. Is _that _the point of the water? It's hardly a flood at all. It's only about a foot deep. It's only caught me up because it's moving so fast and I can't get out of it. Is the flood actually meant to tempt the tributes into drinking it, maybe topping up their good water and ruining it? I can imagine ruined food supplies, water sources, tributes suffering so much thirst they try to drink the salt water anyway.

I can't see anything anymore, it's still night and the water's in my eyes. I fight for breath, spit out the water that's starting to fill my mouth. I'm completely out of control, spinning downwards, my feet pointing down the slope.

Something smacks the back of my head and it drops under the water. Searing heat fills my lungs and I choke, panic. I can't get up, can't get air. I gulp, swallow only more water.

Can't breathe…

This isn't the painless death I wanted…


	8. The Watching

With breath, comes pain.

With pain, comes life.

I shoot upwards, gasping for air. Water explodes from my mouth, trickling down onto my already soaked body. I drop heavily back to the ground, feeling utterly exhausted. I've never felt this bad before. I cough on more water, force it out. I want to hide away somewhere and sleep.

"Can't believe that worked."

I ignore them, concentrating everything on breathing. Water still bubbles in my chest as I inhale, catching roughly.

"Bet that's the first time _that's _happened!"

The ground around me is muddy and sucks me down to it, resisting my efforts to raise an arm and wipe the water from my face.

"If that didn't make the cameras, I'll kill them."

Finally I really take notice of the voice and turn my head to the left to see who it is.

Garnet's lying on her back, looking about as bad as I feel. She seems to have been knocked on the head, though; she's giggling like a child.

_What is going on here?_

I remember the flood, remember being caught up in the gushing salt water. Something had knocked my head – hard – I reach around and feel a massive lump. I'd been unable to keep my mouth out of the water…

I'd drowned.

It had _really hurt._

And then suddenly I'd breathed again, and it had hurt even worse, and then I was here.

I drowned…

I actually died…?

So why am I still here? I raise a hand to my neck, feel what's definitely a pulse. Why am I still alive?

"How you doing?" Garnet crawls over to me, eyes sparkling behind the melted, burned skin of her face. "I bet that's not something that happens to you every day."

My face says it all for me.

"What happened?" Garnet laughs. "Aviary, you _died_. You really died. They actually fired a cannon for you!" She flops to the ground and bursts out cackling like it's the funniest thing she's ever said.

I died? They were so sure I was dead that they fired my cannon?

"So… so anyway, I came down looking for you, wasn't long after the cannon, not even a minute. And you're lying there, sort of washed up, and all the water's draining away. And I just think, well damn, there goes the only person I can trust not to backstab me, and I brought you back."

_How? _I want to scream it, but I'm having enough trouble breathing right now. Thankfully Garnet's either clever or a good guesser.

"I sort of held you up, shook all the water out of you, and kept whacking your back like you do for people who are choking. I figured it might work here as well. And hey! Check it out!" Completely casually, she reaches over and punches my shoulder.

I'm back from the dead.

Garnet saved my life.

I stare at the girl who's just broken one of the unwritten rules of the Games. If your ally dies because of somebody else, it's almost never your fault – and since this was a Gamemaker event, Garnet is totally blameless. Nobody would have expected her to try and save me, especially after the cannon had gone off. Nobody in Twelve would have held it against her if she'd run back to the campsite to salvage what was left. I'm pretty sure nobody in Seven would have blamed her either. The cannon had fired; she was one tribute closer to victory. Doesn't she know we can't both win? That if she wants out – and I know she does, so much – I have to die anyway?

I can't understand her. She called me 'the only person I can trust not to backstab me', but I couldn't kill her if I were dead. And while she did need me to make weapons for her, she's got an impressive arsenal, now; even if I did make more she couldn't carry them with her, so she's not keeping me around for that. My life has no value to her, especially with her weird outlook, where human life has no value just for being human life. She didn't save me just so that I wouldn't die. There's got to be something she wants.

Unfortunately, that's too complicated a question to get across to her with just my facial expressions and it's not worth wasting my air.

"Let's get back," Garnet says, rolling to her feet with an easy, fluid grace. "There better be some stuff left up there. And nobody had better find it either."

She grabs my shoulders and hauls me out of the sand and over her back. I hang down awkwardly and suddenly flash back to years of being carted around by Father. Garnet's still more careful than he ever was, despite being completely exhausted and crossing slippery, treacherous terrain. There's sand under my eyes for quite some time before it turns to leaf litter and the little starlight's blocked out by the trees. Garnet keeps walking for what seems like hours but I know must be less than one. I focus my eyes more and for the first time realize just how slowly we're moving. Garnet must be more tired than she's willing to admit. Of course I can't ask her how she's feeling, but I hope she's not going to push herself beyond her limits. I can well believe that's she's decided to get back to our camp and she's not going to settle for stopping in an equivalent spot.

Finally I'm dropped to the ground. Wet and muddy, it softens my fall almost totally. Garnet lands beside me, eyes already shut. I reach over and take her hand. She saved me. I don't know why and I don't care. I'm still alive.

I'm alive _again…_

Garnet's gone when I wake up in the morning, meaning I'm saved from thanking her. Despite knowing her for almost a week, I'm still surprised by her attitude. She's gone off hunting like this was a completely normal day, her routine hasn't changed at all. Neither has mine, to be honest – I'm still lying here, doing nothing much but breathing and listening to the wind. The air's cold, and it doesn't help that I'm still wet from being soaked last night. One of my bark blankets is draped over me and it's at least keeping the wind off, and some of my body heat is trapped underneath it. My head's icy, though, and my hair's plastered uncomfortably over my face and neck. It's utterly filthy, to the point of looking pitch black, and suddenly I just want to hack it all off and throw it away. But the Games have taken enough from me. I won't let them change me any more than I can help. The hair stays.

Thinking about it, the Games haven't actually changed me that much. I've seen really mild, meek, almost wimpy tributes turn into casual killers, and tough, determined Careers faint at the sight of blood. But me, I'm still the same.

I do nothing, feel nothing, be nothing.

There's really nothing about me that the Games _can _change. I have almost no personality. I can't be cowardly or courageous when there's nothing to fear. I can't be interesting or boring when there's nothing to say. I haven't killed anybody, but for all I know that's simply because I physically can't. In another body, might I have killed another tribute? Accidentally, deliberately? Is the inability to move all that's stopping me from going out hunting like Garnet?

Being like this does eliminate certain choices that I would have had to make otherwise. I don't have to choose between hunting and hiding, but if I did, what would I have done? If another tribute stood before me, and I was standing too, would I really drop my weapon and let them kill me for the sake of my principles? Would I rather be killed than kill? Or would I go the other way, and fight them, because in the end I do value my life above theirs? There are no answers here, because I don't need to ask the questions. I can't fight with a weapon I don't have. I can't run with legs that won't move. There's only one thing to do if another tribute finds me.

Die.

A cannon fires and snaps me from my thoughts. Somebody's dead. Out there, somebody's child just died. Somebody's friend. Maybe even my friend. Garnet could be dead right now and I have no way of knowing. If she's dead I'll never know what happened to her. Was she ambushed? Took on a tribute who was stronger than she thought? Fell out of a tree and broke her neck? If she died just now I'll only see a face in the sky tonight.

Was my face in the sky last night? Garnet says they fired a cannon for me. But I can't ask her, because she was just as exhausted as I was; me from drowning, and her from carrying me back here. If I slept through the nightly anthem, she must have too. So do the other tributes think I'm dead? Have they counted the remaining tributes on their fingers like Garnet and I did?

Who _is _alive, anyway? I only know one for certain – me. Somebody died just now, and there could have been any number yesterday. The last official count we made was a few days ago, with nine tributes left. By now we're certainly in the final eight.

I haven't thought about my television appearances yet – that's only important if you're counting on sponsors, and given that I've been sent nothing at all, there's no way I have any. But now I'm in the final eight, that means they're going to interview my family and friends. Well, family anyway. I shudder at the thought. Clarrine would just be happy that I'm out of the way and she gets Father's attention all to herself – she's probably the only relative who doesn't want their tribute to come home. Father will go on and on about how wonderful the Games are and how proud he is of me for following in his footsteps. Mom won't be able to talk about me. She won't be able to _talk_. Will the Capitol audience be satisfied with such a limited offering? I have no friends, either, so my little feature will have only Father and Clarrine. There's no way the Capitol can let that happen. They'll probably have all the girls tell a bunch of lies about how sorry they are for me and how I'm such a fighter for surviving after the accident. And knowing the Capitol and how they treat people, they'll force the same out of Mom. They'll drug her or torture her or something, but I know they'll have to have her talk about me. There's no way the audience won't want to see my mother. The Capitol's got to love the grieving parents they see every year, and they're not going to miss out on one just because she's violently allergic to people. I close my eyes and shudder at the nightmare. I know I'm right, I know this is happening to her.

Even in the arena, I'm still hurting my family. I'm half the country away from her and I'm still causing Mom pain. Why didn't I think of this before? Why did I let myself survive to the final eight? Why didn't I just kill myself that first night? I had a weapon, I made it specially. I should have used it then, and not given up because I was too weak. I should have kept trying.

I hate myself.

I'm a failure as a daughter, as a sister, a friend, a tribute and as a human being. I'm a stupid, worthless failure and if I had that knife in my hand I'd be dead already.

It's a good thing that nobody likes me. I don't even like me. I hope Garnet's decided to end the alliance and she's not coming back. I'll starve to death quicker without her looking out for me. If somebody finds me, she won't be here to defend me. Somebody had better find me soon, otherwise I'm just going to lift my arms and throttle myself. I don't care how much it hurts, I don't care that it's supposedly impossible, I want this to be over. I don't deserve to live.

Footsteps in the trees behind me. I smile at the unmistakable sound of feet disturbing foliage. There's no way it's Garnet, she's much quieter than this person. And even if she is coming back – if she's alive at all – she's not here to protect me now. Whoever this is, they're going to grant my greatest wish.

"Hello? Is somebody there?"

_There's somebody over here. Come on. Come closer. Kill them. Kill that helpless tribute lying there. It's merciful, isn't it? You know she doesn't want to live. Who would, if they had her life? Just come this way and kill her, she won't fight. She'll help you if you ask her to._

There's somebody out there, somebody who can give me what they want. And if they want to live, killing me gets them that much closer to home. It'd be a win/win situation if they'd only get over here!

I raise my arm and start thumping the ground to draw their attention. It's bruising and painful, and aches start up along all the bones, but it won't go on for long.

_Thump. Thump. Somebody's here. Thump. Thump._

I strain to raise my voice again. "Hello?" I hope they're not deaf. Or blind. They'll never find me if they are. I hope it's a full Career pack, all four of them, still carrying the weapons I made. I hope they hurry up, because despite the common phrase, the waiting _isn't _killing me.

Then they step into the clearing and I see my killer.

I think it's the girl from Eight, Garnet called her Ketra. She's stick thin and all her limbs are kind of bent, skewed, like her bones aren't straight. That's probably just what's happened to her. She looks a lot like me, physically; at a guess I'd call her malnourished. My overactive imagination produces a massive family, seven siblings and an elderly aunt, so of course there's not enough to go around, and her parents are both dead so there's no money either, and Ketra was the youngest so she just starved and starved and nobody noticed that she was the weakest child in the whole district until the Quarter Quell plucked her from her family, who she loves anyway despite everything…

I shake my head and clear away the pointless vision. She's about to kill me and that's good. Tentatively, she takes two shaking steps closer. She's got a rock in her hand, but she's holding it awkwardly, like she doesn't know what to do with it.

_Come on. Bash me in the head. It's not that hard._

Then her whole body tenses and her eyes widen with fear. I fling my head sideways, try to see what's scared her.

Yliza. The girl from Three. My blood runs cold and I've got to look just as scared as Ketra. Yliza will happily kill me, but she'll take her time doing it. She'll make it painful and horrible, and I just want it to be over quickly.

Yliza smiles at Ketra over my head. Just like in the bloodbath, I can be safely ignored until the more difficult tributes are taken care of. I'm not going anywhere. Ketra might.

"Sweetie," she says, still smiling like she's a friend come for a surprise visit, "I've killed two Careers already. Do you really think a rock is going to hold me off?"

Ketra's biting her lip so hard she's bleeding, and her hand trembles like she's about to drop the rock.

"No, no, keep it," Yliza says, reaching out a placating hand. "It's so much more fun if you fight back. Fun for me, that is." And, still smiling, still cheery, she steps over my body and lunges.

Ketra falls under her and swings the rock upwards. They both scream in pain and I flinch. Ketra rolls out and Yliza flips to her feet, laughing and breathing heavily.

"Oh, you're good," she says in between gasps and cackles. "_You're _fun. More fun than her," and she turns to poke me with her toe.

"Hey," I snap suddenly. It's like the prayers of Ketra's hypothetical family hit me in the face, prayers that the third girl here saves their sister. "Leave her alone!" I fling out my arm and whack it against Yliza's leg.

"Back off," she snarls, kicking me in the ribs. I gasp in pain, shudder at the fire crawling along my side. "It'll be your turn in a minute."

Her head's turned down towards me so she doesn't notice Ketra fly across the space between the two of them. Her rock catches Yliza's skull and they both fall onto me. Yliza gasps something and her hand flies to her head. They're both still struggling, and I can't breathe with their weight on me. Yliza's blood hits my face and I feel it stinging like acid. She's getting weaker, moving less. Ketra's rock is gone and she's just keeping Yliza's knife-filled hand away from her.

Then Yliza jerks and they're both off me. I curl up, gasping for air and somehow, when I'm still again, there's a knife in Ketra's chest. My eyes shoot to Yliza's empty hand, just inches from the hilt.

"Gotcha," Yliza giggles, her voice just a whisper. She's fighting for every breath, now, and I'm soaked in the blood pouring from her head. Ketra's pulled the knife out, now, and she's howling in pain as she tries to press the wound closed. Her blood splatters me too and I can feel it seeping into my skin. The world goes red and I try to wipe my eyes clear. Yliza and Ketra aren't even moving anymore, they're both on their knees staring at each other. Ketra's swaying, unable to stay balanced, but Yliza's bleeding more. The ground's soaked red, red as my skin, red as the shirt of the tribute uniform we're all wearing.

Ketra falls to the ground with no sound, no warning. One second she was upright, focused, and the next she was gone. Yliza laughs again, whispers something, and then she falls too, collapsed over Ketra's body.

I can't believe what's happened, but I also can't look away from the proof. My vision is filled with nothing but their bodies, blood-soaked and ravaged, and all I can feel is their blood coating me. Their last moments won't stop playing themselves in my head. The knife suddenly sticking out from Ketra's chest. The sound of the rock breaking Yliza's skull. Yliza's last words, whispered at Ketra's body, that I didn't even hear. Ketra's screams, the only sounds I heard her make. Yliza's firm belief that if Ketra fought back it would be more fun. On and on and on…

Suddenly it hits me that I'm the oldest person here. I'm sixteen and I'm sure they're both younger than I am. I should have been the adult here, I should have stopped them, should have flung myself between them so Yliza's thirst for blood would be sated and Ketra could have run. Both of them could still be alive if I'd only been a whole, uninjured person. If I'd only been able to protect them as I should have.

My whole body starts to shake as I just stare, keep staring, at their bodies. Two cannons fire, one after the other. I guess after my revival the Gamemakers are being more conservative. For the first time I tear my eyes away and glance up at the sky, waiting for the hovercraft to take them away. But the minutes pass and nobody comes. Why aren't they gone yet? Why do they still lie here beside me?

Beside me…

They only send in the hovercraft when the surviving tribute has gone. Otherwise I suppose they might try to hitch a ride and escape. I have to be a hundred yards away, or something like that, before the hovercraft will come. But I can't move and they're not going anywhere.

No hovercraft.

The three of us are just going to stay here, stay here forever…

Three dead bodies all in a row…


	9. The Choosing

I can still feel the heat of Yliza and Ketra's blood on my skin. The warmth from their bodies transfers into mine as I just stare at them, stare at the two girls who fought each other to the death not even minutes ago.

"What the hell… Aviary? Aviary!"

I don't see Garnet arrive, all I see are Yliza and Ketra. Hands grab my head, force me to look upwards. Garnet takes my pulse twice before she's satisfied I'm alive.

"Aviary, what the hell happened here?"

With an effort, I choke out the words. "Ketra found me… and then Yliza came… and they fought each other." It's all I can say but it's not enough, it gives no indication of how bloody the fight was, or how terrified Ketra was, or the barely sane laughter of Yliza.

Garnet's staring at the bodies just like I was, but now I find I can't look back. Now I'm staring at Garnet's face-that's-not-a-face, as her eyes focus only on the bodies.

"What about you?"

I shrug, but no words come this time. I've never had to communicate something like _this_. I literally don't know what to say.

"Bet they ignored you, huh. Bet they just went around you and figured they could deal with you later."

"Yes. Yes, that's exactly…" Yliza literally stepped over me. They were both so focused on the other that when they fell onto me it didn't distract them. Neither of them attacked me in passing, simply because I was in arm's reach and it would save time. I think, to them, I just didn't exist.

I hope their families forgive me. I hope the loved ones watching the live broadcast knew that I couldn't help. I hope they don't blame me for doing nothing while their daughters and sisters died.

But I'm probably the last person they're thinking about right now. They'll be thinking of their loss, of all the good times they had together, of the last moment of farewell when they held her in their arms and said goodbye. They were thinking then that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't goodbye for ever, but now they know it was. They know that she died, far from home and friends, without comfort or ease. She died in pain and panic, fighting for her life and losing.

I close my eyes to the sight of their bodies and my heart to the grief of their families. I won't think about that now. It's over, it's done. And nothing I do now or anything I could have done then will change that. They're both dead, that's it. That's all. They will never breathe or laugh or smile again.

After seeing that, my death wish is gone. All my thoughts and self-hatred have just been outdone. It's hard to think about how horrible you are for doing nothing when you've just seen two children commit bloody murder. Suddenly I don't seem so bad, and I'm not actively seeking death anymore.

I look up at Garnet again, who's started to drag Ketra's body away. She meets my gaze and says, somewhat defensively, "Well, _you're _not moving. And they won't get picked up until there's some distance between us. What, you want me to leave them here?"

I shake my head and look away. Garnet keeps going and I don't look at her when she comes back for Yliza's body. Only when she returns, hands soaked in blood, do I dare raise my eyes.

"Sorry," she mutters, kicking at the crimson ground. "It's just… I kill clean, y'know? There's four tributes dead because of me but I swear, they felt nothing. I'd look back at them and think they were sleeping, but this…" She drops to the ground and runs her scarred hands through her hacked-short hair.

She seems to be completely at a loss for what to do next and I have no ideas either. It seems impossible that we could get up and keep going after this. There's just no way that Garnet can go out and find food and bring it back, like always, that I can keep making blankets and bowls and little carved figurines, that we can hold our faltering conversations in the evenings. There's no going back from this. There's no going on either. It's like the whole world has just stopped, here in this clearing, and nothing's happening anymore. It's all going past us in a big, blurry swirl – or even more likely, it's all stopped along with us. How can the world not end after this? How can I still be breathing now when all the air in my lungs should be forfeit, when I should be frozen into stone?

My eyes close and I don't care that the sun's still in the sky, awareness drops away from me and I fall asleep. I sleep my way through the horror and the numbness. I sleep through the hovercraft retrieving the sad bodies, I sleep through the anthem playing and their faces shining in the sky one last time before joining their true selves in oblivion. I sleep, but the world's still there in the morning.

Garnet's hunched over, looking terrible. I don't think she slept at all. A constant stream of names hisses from her lips, the names of the tributes still alive.

"Leam. Brion. Aviary. Garnet. Leam. Brion. Aviary. Garnet. Leam. Brion. Aviary. Garnet."

It takes me several moments to realize there's only four names. Me, her, Brion, who I think is the boy from Six, and Leam, the boy from Three. One of the Careers. I made him a sling on the very first day. When did all the others die? Nine in the bloodbath, and six on day two. That leaves nine, so five died since then. Yliza and Ketra I know, and there was a third cannon that day, so three yesterday. There were two when I was making weapons for Garnet. That doesn't seem like enough. There are meant to be twenty-four of us, which sounds like a big number, but broken down into all these little numbers it seems like there should be more of us. I count again on my fingers: nine bloodbath, then six on day two, then two, then three, and four still alive. That does make twenty-four, but once again I don't trust the numbers. I don't believe that twenty children are already dead. I don't want to count how many I've seen die, but I do; two during the bloodbath and then two right here. I have helplessly watched four people die.

That's as many as Garnet has killed.

I shudder and close my eyes, trying to shut the world away. It's worked before back in Seven, mostly on the reaping days when the crowds and the agonies got too much, but also during normal times, times when Clarrine's prattling really got to me, or Father's reminiscences about the Games got too detailed.

I never thought I'd see a Games for myself.

I haven't seen much of it, though. Massive fights have gone on without my awareness, I've hardly moved out of this clearing. Garnet's been bringing me branches and bark from trees I haven't seen. I don't know what's in the rest of the arena. There could be a whole ocean out there that I don't know about. My ignorance is quite frightening. It's hard to believe that I've survived to the final four tributes simply by doing nothing.

Nothing except making weapons. That's my saving grace. That's the only reason I wasn't the tenth bloodbath tribute. I shove aside the lingering fears that I'm responsible for all those deaths. Didn't Ketra kill Yliza with a rock? Does the earth feel guilty for providing her with a weapon? They're just tools. The slings and nets and bows I made are all just tools.

I knew they would be used for killing. I knew the only thing to come from those tools would be murder. But it was kinder than the slow, lingering death I watched the girl from Ten suffer. If Ketra had had a better weapon than a rock, Yliza wouldn't have slowly bled to death from a broken skull and Ketra could have escaped unharmed.

If the Capitol hadn't brought them here…

That doesn't matter now. We all belong to the Capitol in the end, and the Capitol just has to wave its hand to turn children into murdered and murderers. If you don't kill, you die. There has never been a bloodless winner of the Hunger Games. Every victor has always killed another tribute, and very often more than one. Father killed five in his Games, as he used to be frighteningly fond of telling me. There's no way to escape the Capitol.

If they want us to kill, then we will kill.

If they want others to kill us, then we will be killed.

I wonder why there has never been a Games where all the tributes have stood up together and said 'No'. Why have we never defied the Capitol?

The answer's simple.

If you refuse to kill, you _will _die.

But if you _don't _refuse… if you kill people, they can't win anymore.

At first, you're one in twenty-four. But every tribute you kill makes the odds better. One in twenty-three… twenty-two… twenty-one… And everybody's thinking the same thing, so the numbers shrink as the strong hunt down the weak. And finally, you're one in one and you're going home.

And because of you, twenty-three other children aren't.

I've never seen it in Father, but surely some of the victors have got to feel the pain of the others in their Games. Some of them have got to carry that burden for the rest of their lives. Even Father still remembers the names and characteristics of the five he killed. I don't know what would be worse, being killed or knowing that you killed someone. Whoever kills me is going to know what they did for the rest of their lives. And given the numbers, whoever kills me has a very good chance of being the victor. They could live for years, maybe even decades, all the time knowing what they did. Will they see my face in their dreams? Will my name slide from between their lips? A faceless, nameless figure starts chanting 'Aviary, Aviary, Aviary…' Did they pay enough attention to be during training and the interviews to pick up my full name? 'Aviary Karradi, Aviary Karradi, Aviary Karradi…' Are they going to tell their children about me, the same way Father told me about his victims? Is some child going to hear about Aviary who made weapons with her bare hands and couldn't walk? Aviary, who didn't fight because she couldn't? Aviary, who died twice?

I'd almost forgotten that I've already died. Garnet brought me back, for reasons that I still don't understand. Loyalty? Friendship? Boredom is as likely a reason as any. I certainly enjoy the conversations we have in the evenings. Evenings are normally the only time that Garnet's around.

Except for now. It's midmorning and Garnet's still here, constantly whispering the four names of the tributes still alive. I don't know why seeing their bodies has hit her so hard. I'm in a better state than she is. I saw them die but I feel okay.

I feel like I wouldn't go fall off a cliff, basically. I feel like they died for nothing, and it's horrible and awful and everything that humanity should never be, but that's been around me for over a week. I think I feel like it was just another part of the Games.

Or maybe that's just how traumatized I really am, that I can't process or understand what's happened.

It doesn't matter. I'll be dead soon anyway.

Perhaps. For the first time I let myself really believe that I could survive. I'm in the final four. Maybe, just like Yliza and Ketra, all three others will kill each other. Maybe there'll be some natural disaster and I'll get lucky, just like Nile, who's supposed to be my mentor but hasn't shown her hand through the entire week in the arena. Maybe I can go home.

But what would that be worth? I picture nightmares where all I can see are the faces of the dead tributes in the sky, of seeing the slow strangulation of the girl from Ten over and over and over. I imagine the final interviews and then the Victory Tour, of looking into the eyes of the dead tributes' families. I think of Father, and how his regard for me will sprout, but for such an unwelcome reason that I won't want it. I can almost taste Clarrine's jealousy, as I become without a doubt Father's favorite child, and safe from the reapings that she'll have to go through. And I'll be home again, staring at the same ceiling for hours, pointless and pathetic as I was before all this happened.

But I'll be alive. And while I'm alive, I can change things. I can rediscover my crafting abilities, make things that aren't lethal. I'll be given my own house, I can move away from Father and Clarrine. Maybe I'll take Mom with me and we can finally have the bond I always wanted. If I live, I can do something. Living can make living worthwhile.

It's another day before Garnet's pulled herself together. The anthem's played and the sky's shown blankness, and the sun's risen again when she finally gets to her feet. It's hard to believe that Yliza and Ketra died the day before yesterday.

"I'm going out," Garnet says, voice shaky. It's the first thing she's said in twenty-four hours that wasn't the names of the tributes. "We need food. And there's two out there." She snatches up one of the weapons I made for her and suddenly she's all cool business again. She takes another and heads off like everything is fine. I'm glad she's feeling better, but I don't know what cost it's come at. How much of herself has she had to lock up in order to stop feeling over those girls' deaths? Will she ever be able to retrieve that part of herself that was horrified at the bloody mess of it all?

I'm glad to know that a part like that existed. Garnet's strange mind holds no intrinsic value for human life. She can kill somebody as easily as picking a flower. I think what really hurt her was the 'unprofessionalism' of the deaths; that somebody could botch something as simple as murder that badly. I think it's a part of her that does feel sympathy, that does understand that those deaths were wrong just for being deaths.

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

I won't deny that Garnet scares me. Anybody who can kill four tributes without a blink should be scary.

But how do I know it really was 'without a blink'? For all I know, she cries over their bodies and weeps on her own before coming back to our camp. For all I know, she grieves just as much as a normal person would, maybe more, but there's no sign of it when she returns in the evening. I just don't know anything about her.

Garnet could be anybody. Anyone. I hardly know her, and she's already saved my life. One obvious time, bringing me back from the dead after the flood, but countless others, through feeding me and keeping me sane. For all I know, one of the tributes she killed would have killed me. Garnet is the closest thing I've ever had to a friend.

And I may know nothing about friendship, but I think she deserves the term in full. She's helped me and gotten to know me, and maybe I do know some things about her. I know about her siblings, the four younger ones that she supports through love, since her parents are too busy supporting them materially to have any time left over. I know her determination, her support, how her disability almost doesn't affect her at all. Despite the hideous burns and misshapen face, she acts completely normal, totally unaware of how she looks.

The sun slides halfway across the sky before I hear a cannon. I flinch, knocking my head against the ground painfully enough for my vision to blur. Who died? All I know is that it wasn't me. Garnet could have been killed. Maybe Brion's been dying for days. Leam might have tripped over something and killed himself. Any of them could be coming for me right now. My fingers scrabble in the dirt, searching for a branch, a stick, anything like a weapon. Now I realize how badly I want to live.

But nobody comes, and eventually I relax, and go back to soaking in the sun and staring at the sky. I enjoy the tendrils of the wind and the softness of the grass.

Then a second cannon fires.

There's only two of us left. I've made it to the final two… I can't believe it. It's impossible. Surely you can't survive the Hunger Games by lying around?

Maybe Garnet's coming back…

If it's come down to the two of us, I know what she's going to do. She'll kill me for sure. There's no way she'd give up on her siblings like that. I know for sure that they come first. She knows there's nobody waiting for me with breath held, hands clasped in desperation. Despite our tenuous friendship, she'll turn on me in an instant. There's nothing more I can give her. Every minute I live is a minute she doesn't spend with her family.

Of course, that's all true if Brion or Leam is the survivor, but they don't know where I am. Garnet does. Right now, Garnet is the worst one to be still alive. Of the three of them, she's the most dangerous.

But can I call myself her friend if I'm hoping she's dead?

_BANG!_

A _third _cannon?

It's over…?

I've won?

But nothing happens and I'm suddenly sure I've heard it wrong. Maybe it was something else. There should have been an announcement of the winner, a fanfare, something. Clearly I'm wrong, it wasn't a cannon. In fact, it might have been a falling tree or something normal like that. Maybe the Gamemakers have engineered another disaster.

Apart from the simple facts that I know _exactly _what a falling tree sounds like, and that the Gamemakers would certainly rather have any of those three rather than me for victor, it's possible. Apart from the fact that it's impossible, it's possible.

The sun disappears and the sky shades darker and darker. The moon appears from behind a cloud. Stars begin to speckle the sky.

The anthem plays and my breath catches. This is it. Now I find out my entire fate. Leam's face, slightly familiar from that first day. Then Brion's; I've never seen it before, but there's nobody else that it could be. That leaves Garnet alive. Why hasn't she come for me…?

Because a third face flashes in the sky and there is nobody, _nobody_, in all of Panem who could possibly be mistaken for Garnet. The melted, scarred skin can only be hers. Then the light's gone and there's only the thin moon to see by.

They're all dead? Garnet's dead?

It hurts that this moment has come just as I've decided she is my friend. After all we've been through together, there's nothing else she can be. She saved my life. It seems the deepest betrayal that saving my life should cost hers.

Garnet, eldest of five siblings who all love each other and whose parents act like parents. Garnet, who brought me back from the dead and fed me and kept me safe. Garnet, who talked to me through all those evenings. Garnet, who brought me materials to work with, ones that weren't for weapons, just so I wouldn't be bored during the day.

Garnet, the only friend I've ever had.

But now I'm alone again.

Can I really do this? Can I actually live with what's happened? Visions of the past week flash through my head – the little girl from Ten being strangled, the Careers with weapons made by my own hands, Yliza and Ketra's bloody fight. And things I've never seen, things Garnet told me: the fight where a bunch of tributes got together and took on the Careers, trading most of their lives for one Career's. I know now what that must have been like. And still more, others, things that must have happened. What kind of fight took Garnet down? She'd killed four tributes. Who could have stopped her?

Can I live with these pictures in my head forever? Can I really find other things to see? Will the guilt of not knowing the names of the dead fade? After seeing what I have seen, I know I'm not the sort of person who can live with this. I know I can't ever leave this arena, not in my head. Yliza and Ketra's last fight, the violence of the bloodbath, the hideous inhuman appearances of the Capitol citizens won't ever leave me.

I'm not strong enough. I've never been strong enough. The physical trials of the final interviews and the Victory Tour are overwhelming enough, and then there's the lifelong role of being a victor. But beyond that there's the simple fact that I will see the faces in the sky every night. I know I will never stop flinching at every rustle, every shaking leaf. I will never trust anybody.

Nobody survives the Games. I think of Father, of the other victors I've seen. Why had none of them ever made this choice?

I reach down and tug the blood-crusted tribute uniform straight, comb my fingers through my hair. Slowly my hand crawls to a memorized location, digging deep into the dirt just to feel its coolness against my skin. My fingers close around something smooth and hard. It's the knife I made way back during the first night, back when my whole plan was to kill myself. Garnet took it when we first met, but the flint blade is clean, the binding neat, the handle unmarked. She never used it. This knife is still mine.

The roar of a hovercraft above me is sudden and shocking. My heart pounds painfully. It has to be now.

I won't be a pawn. I'm not a card in their deck. They're not going to use me as a puppet, parade me before all of Panem, force me into the mould of being a victor.

I will beat the Capitol.

As I slam the knife down, _I _win.


	10. The Living

I scream without knowing why. All I'm aware of is that something is terribly wrong, this shouldn't be happening, why am I here…?

Aren't I dead?

Anger and rage and panic had driven that handmade knife into my chest. I remembered the stabbing pain of my skin splitting, the cold blade freezing my chest. I remember feeling my heart beating through the wooden handle, its frenzied pumping vibrating up the knife jammed into it.

And then nothing.

Until now.

Black despair swamps me. What am I, immortal? Garnet saved my life after I drowned, and somebody brought me back just now. Not to mention the accident I survived as a child.

Why can't I die?

Voices register beside me. I turn my aching head to the left and try to find who's speaking.

Two white-robed doctors stand by my bed.

My heart leaps and I stop breathing. They've saved me? While I technically know it's their job to heal, I can't imagine them defending my life.

But that's not what this is about. If it were, they'd have saved all those other children. But they were only tributes. I'm a victor.

Against all odds, against hope, against my own wishes, I'm a victor.

I'm just like Father…

I fling myself into a sitting position and scan the room frantically for anything lethal. I remember knives, equipment, from the few times I've seen Capitol doctors. There's got to be something here!

"Hey, lie down!" Hands seize my shoulders, drag me back to the bed. "Don't move!"

"You don't understand," I start sobbing, "I have to die, please, I have to die…" My arms fly and my fingers bury themselves in the white coat. "You have to kill me! Please, listen! _You have to kill me!_"

My voice is so loud it hurts my throat and my ears. Something jabs my arm, something sharp but moving like a whisper. I recognize the same feeling as when I was injected with a tracker before going into the Launch Room. Fog descends over the world. My hand drops, unwilling, back to my side. Slowly I sway before crashing back to the mattress.

_No. No. This can't be happening…_

It's not death, I recognize death now. Death is a familiar friend. It's _sleep_ that's my enemy, paralyzing sleep that won't let me do anything. While I sleep, I am safe. But I don't want to be safe. I want to be dead.

I have lived too much.

_I don't want…_

But it happens anyway. The world spins into blackness.

"Well, well, who'd have thought?"

I blink in the sudden light. A shadow on my right blocks my sight that way. I turn to the left instead. It's not the same room as I woke up in before, but a quick glance over it tells me everything I want to know. I ignore the color of the carpet, the softly padded walls.

All I care about is that the room is totally devoid of anything I can kill myself with.

_Damn._

A memory flashes – isn't somebody in here with me? I rock my head back to my right and see somebody I didn't expect.

Nile. Her dark skin and darker hair provide reassuring relief from the bright light everywhere else I look.

"I never thought you'd make it this far," she says once our eyes meet. "I had you pegged for a bloodbath tribute for sure."

"You… you didn't help me… you sent me _nothing_!" Hatred surges through me, all washing out towards this woman who was willing to save Kain but not me, who never gave me anything, who ignored me completely until now.

Except for before the Games started, when she'd stopped the Avoxes giving me food and nearly starved me to death…

"Kill me! You can kill me! You wanted to before!"

"_Before_, you were just a tribute. I thought that maybe I could spare you the arena if you died before you went in. But _now _you're a victor. Now you're valuable. Now you can't be allowed to die."

"_Damn_." The first swearword I've ever spoken in my life tastes like ash.

"Why'd you do it, anyway? Tell me the truth. All those people out there are going to be fed some soppy cover story, we need to keep up the image. There _has _to be a victor, surely you knew that? Don't you know what happened that one year without one?"

I hadn't seen it but Father had, and he'd told me what happened. The Gamemakers had made a deal with the tributes that if the last two were from the same district, they could both go home. And the last two _were _from the same district, Twelve, but then the Gamemakers had called it off. But rather than kill the other and go home alone, they'd both eaten some poisonous berries and died beside each other. There was no victor. Nobody left that arena.

There was nearly a rebellion, Father said, but not the kind I'd expected. The _Capitol _had turned against its leaders. Apparently everybody had loved those last two tributes, had wanted them both to live happily ever after – they were in love, so deeply in love that even Father cried over it – and instead of giving the Capitol the happy ending they'd wanted, the Gamemakers had killed both of them.

The Hunger Games are supposed to be the ultimate entertainment. But that one had been very badly calculated. The Games were very nearly ended by the Capitol citizens; Father says that they didn't want to lose a victor like that again. The Capitol practically worships them. And those two were special even among victors.

So there was no way I'd be allowed to die. After that year, the Capitol couldn't take the risk again.

"Don't you think your father wanted another life? Don't you think _I _tried to escape this? But there's no way out. _They own us_. Don't forget it again."

My mouth goes dry. I'd thought I was alone in my views, I'd thought that every other victor loved their fame and fortune.

"Now tell me why. _Exactly _why."

"I don't want to live, I can't do this! I'm not strong like you, or Father, or anybody. I see their faces, I feel their blood on my hands. I never said goodbye to Garnet… she just walked away like it was completely normal." I can't even remember the last words she'd said to me. "I don't want the Capitol to use me like this. I can't give them my life, Nile. So I took it away from them in the only way I knew how."

Nile snorts. "Everybody dreams about that, kid. Only a couple of Careers really enjoy being where we are, and even they realize that it isn't worth it. The Capitol uses us more than you know. You're just thinking of the final interview and the Victory Tour, aren't you?"

"Y-yeah…?"

"But there's more. We have to go to parties in the Capitol and pretend we love the attention, and burn inside because we can't bring any of that wealth back home. Do you know what it's like to see more food than the district eats in a year, all on one table? Do you know what it's like to have to leave it there, to be unable to feed starving children with it? You will soon. You think you're shy now? Wait until you're surrounded by people everywhere you go, _staring _people, _interested _people. You'll never be alone in your whole life."

I slam my hands over my ears. "Stop it!"

Nile grabs my arm and yanks it down. She leans close and hisses into my ear. "You'll be mentoring now. Wait until you have to teach a little girl how to survive the arena. You'll relive every moment of your games, and you'll be glad, because every lesson you pass on to her means she might live. _And then she'll die anyway_. But you'll try again the next year, and the next, because you can't make yourself give up on her."

"Stop it!"

Her hand jerks away like my skin burns her. "I know the names of every girl I've mentored. I'll remember them all my life. At first I thought I'd rather forget them. But is there any greater shame than that? If you forget them it's like they never existed. So I remember them, I remember them all. I keep them alive in _here_." Her hand slams against the side of her head. "Do you get it now? We _all _want out. But if _we _can't, _you _can't either."

She stands abruptly, knocking over the chair. I can feel my shock and horror contorting my face. Her words echo in my brain, bouncing between the walls on the edge of the empty void inside my head.

"Live, Aviary Karradi. Live because you must. Live because there's no escape." She stalks to the door with angry elegance. Her hand, graceful and delicate, hesitates before opening the lock. She doesn't look at me, but I know her words are intended for me. "If it gets bad, _really _bad, come see me." And then she's gone.

I scream in the silence. But it's not enough and eventually I fall quiet again. That almost expresses my feelings better than the noise. My heart pounds inside my head. Every breath burns like I'm drowning again.

_I wish._

How can I live? How can I live that life she told me about? Everything she said is going to come true. I can almost feel it now, visiting the Capitol, hiding my revulsion at their surgically altered bodies. I can see the tables laden with the feasts, feel my guilt that nobody else can eat like I do. My body aches with exhaustion from the parties, from the talking, from traveling and traveling…

And it's not even real yet.

I force myself to look at my surroundings, to ignore what's going on inside my head. I'm in the same bedroom I was in during training. Everything's the same. The days I spent here were pleasant enough, sleeping calmly after a day of making things with the firemaking instructor who was almost like a replacement mentor.

I think of the things I made during those days, of his patient praise, of the stories we traded. I remember that he compared me to his daughter. I know beyond a doubt I would rather he was my father.

I think of my resolutions in the arena – changeable and varying, first determined to die, then to live, then to die again. I remember that I said there were things that would make life worthwhile. I could make things all the time, I could live apart from Father and Clarrine. I could try and connect with Mom.

I accept what Nile has said: that I must live. I must be a victor. But I won't let the things she talked about overwhelm me. I will do what I want to. I can live, not because the Capitol forces me to, but because I want to.

I will make myself want life.

My heart soars for the first time in ages and I feel like I really can do this. I can get through the interview, I can survive the Victory Tour. I can mentor the girls from District Seven, and I will lose them, but I will help while I can.

I can do all this because there is a prize to win. Life is still out there for me. I can still be alive. There's enough good out there to balance the horror of the games.

Aviary Karradi will live.

And maybe the Capitol won't really care. Maybe I'll just be another victor, one among, if not many, at least several. Maybe there won't be anyone in District Seven cheering over my return. Maybe my family won't change, maybe this won't be enough to make them love me.

I don't care that they don't care. They aren't important. _I _care that I am alive. _I _am happy.

Forget the Capitol. Forget Nile's dark prophecies. I will live for me.

I thought I'd won before, I thought I'd won by killing myself. It was literally my last thought. But I was wrong. That wasn't winning. I'd still died at the hands of the Capitol.

But I'm in control now.

They can't touch me anymore.

By doing this, by choosing to live, to enjoy life, by seeing that the Capitol doesn't really matter…

… _that_'s winning.


End file.
